Biographies and profiles of PCs (and any attached NPCs).

Technical Sergeant Michael Dacovetti
MOS: 1C471 (TACP seconded to JCU)
Age: 35
Languages: English (Native), Italian (Native), Spanish (Fluent), French (passable)
Weapon: As needed, MP7A1 preferred SMG

Bio

 Michael’s problem was that he always wanted to live in the future.  From his earliest memories, he was entranced with spaceships, robots, and the ideas of what a future civilization would look like.  Unfortunately for him, he was born to poor Italian immigrant parents who couldn’t really provide a lot more than access to a New York City library and a third hand computer for him to play with.  It was enough.

 Michael spent hours buried inside the large buildings full of books.  What he learned there, he took home and applied to his computer, trying to make it work better.  He would walk the streets for hours, combing through garbage cans to find cast of computer parts that he could scavenge for parts.  At night, when he was supposed to be asleep, he was utilizing the family’s phone line to access the first Internet bulletin boards, before it was even an Internet.  Then he would go up stairs and read about The Culture or the comings and goings of The Shrike.  Friends were fine, but he wanted the future, now, damn it.  He tested into one of the City’s prestigious tech high schools and kept building and tinkering with circuits, teasing purpose out of silicon.

 Wanting to go to a real university to study engineering was going to be beyond the means of Michael’s restaurant owning dad.  He was proud of his son, but there wasn’t enough money in the bank, so Michael was off to the Air Force.  He had a slot to work in satellites.  It wasn’t space, exactly, but it was close enough.  And then he met TSgt Gardner, a man so slick he could not only sell ice to an Eskimo, but also get him to buy futures in ice and short the summer growing season.  His adventure bug got hooked and he was off to the TACP.  It was fun and games for a couple years, learning the role, drinking too much, spending time in Ft Lewis, WA.  Then 9/11 hit and A1C Dacovetti found himself prepping for war before being deployed into Afghanistan.

 It wasn’t war that he was trying to avoid, not exactly.  He just felt like his talents were wasted in a conventional unit.  Ground warfare seemed so pointless, so inelegant.  Communication SNAFUs were causing friendly fire incidents and units to be cut off for hours or days in bad terrain.  Eager for a change of pace, he applied and was accepted to the Joint Communications Unit.  Instead of being on the sharp end of the spear, he was tasked with making sure operators in hostile environments had access to the information and communication they needed.

 After a four year stint with the JCU, he applied to be released from active duty to finish his bachelor’s degree.  Unable to make it into MIT, he settled for Cal-Tech Poly and finished up his BS in Electrical Engineering in two years before returning to the JCU.  With the Global War on Terror in full swing, Michael spent the next eight years bouncing across one end of the globe to the other.  He would arrive in foreign countries days ahead of Alpha Teams or Delta Squads and set up communication interfaces to facilitate their operations.  Infil could involve jumping out of commercial airliners that had been cooperative with friendly governments to simply walking off a boat with a backpack full of cool toys.  He became a wizard of moving electrons back and forth across often-hostile spectrums.  He could plot satellite positions in his head.

  The Italian looks his parents graced him with turned out to be a godsend.  He was ethnically ambiguous enough to not shriek American! when he entered a foreign country.  Africa became familiar.  He left SE Asia to those who wanted to hang out in the desert.

      The Kindle became a constant companion.  While he was sequestered away on roof tops or hotel rooms waiting for teams to check in, he would continue to devour science fiction and technical journals.  Michael became active on forums dedicated to ideas necessary to build a functioning society in space: his own specialty was how communication systems would work and how they could be designed to transmit signals that could travel massive distances between planets and stars.  Of course, he had to hide who he was and where he was posting from, but when you are an operative, how hard can that really be?  Lately he has been getting more interested in the capabilities of autonomous drones with all of the work he has been doing with them, as well.

      He married a Spanish consultant from Boston Consulting he met in South Africa in 2012, much to the horror of his good Italian Catholic parents.  They don’t see each other much with their high paced schedules, but it works for them.  Michael is enthusiastic in the work he does and the hobbies that he follows.  He does allow that others may not feel similar and he is more than happy to not discuss what a post scarcity economy on Ceres might look like to those who don’t even know what Ceres is.  What he can’t understand, and why Michael continues to do the work that he does, is why some people seem hell bent on destroying any chance to reach the future of the world at all.

 Whatever the assignment, he gives it his all, and is very cognizant of the fact that lives to hang on whether or not he can provide the essential services that he has been tasked with.  He doesn’t brood, but delays can cause him to get twitchy, probably a by-product of early timetable requirements of satellite communications.  Travel is way of life and one that he makes and effort to enjoy, but not in an ostentatious manner.  He likes simple street food and the “peasant cuisines” similar to those he was raised on.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:50, Tue 11 Nov 2014.

Name: Karolina Marianna Kowalska                    Age: 34
Nationality: Polska (Polish)                        Height: 1.71 m
Branch: Wojska Specjalne (Special Troops)           Weight: 55.5 kg
Unit: Jednostka Wojskowa GROM                       Hair: Blonde
Rank: Kapitan (OF-2)                                Eyes: Brown
Current Assignment: NATO Task Force Forty-Seven     Complexion: Fair

Description: A blond hair, brown eyed, Polish female, Lina typically adapts her appearance and clothing to blend-in while on an operation.  Here in Incirlik, she could pass for the cover model of a 5.11 women's catalog, as she's clad head to toe in light weight, neutral colored, tactical clothing.

Languages: Polish (5/5), English (4+/4+), Russian (4/4), Czech (3/3), German (3/3), Arabic (2+/2+)

Skill Profile
Master: Network
Expert: Disguise, Persuasion, Small Arms (Pistol), Unarmed Combat
Professional: Autogun, Acrobatics, Forgery, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled), Interrogation, Intrusion, Leadership, Medical (Trauma Aid), Observation, Small Arms (Rifle), Stealth, Survival, Thrown Weapons
Competent: Grenade Launcher, Medical (Diagnosis), Parachute, Swimming, UFOlogy

Background:  Karolina Kowalska was eight years old when the Poland became a democratic republic.  The years that followed shaped ‘Lina’ by instilling in her a deep desire for self-reliance and a fundamental understanding that change is inevitable.

Small and nibble as a child, Lina took gymnastics lessons early on, supplemented by instruction in both Sambo and Systema.  Her Russian coach, a die-hard communist who returned to his homeland shortly after Lech Wałęsa was elected, instilled in Lina a sense of competition, resiliency, and fearlessness.  From an early age, Lina realized that despite her small size, skill and speed created a synergy that could cripple a far larger opponent.  She would apply that lesson later in life to her intelligence operations, preferring small, talented teams and demanding OPTEMPO to large, sluggish, organizational structures.

After completing her A-Levels, Lina was accepted to the Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska Wojsk Lądowych (Tadeusz Kościuszko Land Forces Military Academy) in Wrocław.  Long before it had the clever acronym STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics had been emphasized in Eastern European and Soviet educational systems.  It was at the Academy however, that Lina began to understand how powerful the skilled application of social sciences could be.  Poland’s entry into NATO during her freshmen year meant that new ideas about military organization, psychology, and leadership were being explored.  Lina, who at enrollment had elected to pursue a Masters in Management following an undergraduate in National Security, began researching western organizational psychology, theory, and leadership development methodologies.  As Lina advanced among the corps of cadets, she learned how to use influence to lead, in contrast to the autocratic style so endemic among her peers.  In 2003 her Master’s thesis led to the wide-scale use of the MBTI as a professional development tool among the Land Forces officer corps.  Herself an ENTJ, Lina was well-respected among the student body and left the Academy with not only with two degrees and her commission, but with numerous friends and contacts as well.

Thanks to lobbying from the senior faculty at Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska Wojsk Lądowych, Lina received her first posting of choice, as liaison officer for the Wojskowe Służby Informacyjne (Military Information Services).  Following successful completion of WSI field and tradecraft training, she was assigned to Camp Echo in Iraq as an intelligence liaison officer.  The Polish military was eager to put their best foot forward when to operating with the Americans, including bright, self-motivated officers such as Lina.  Working with her American counterparts dramatically improved Lina’s command of English during her tour.  Kowalska managed the distribution and dissemination of actionable intelligence between Polish and US units.  Between rotations in Iraq, Lina was based in Poland where she continued her liaison work by briefing Polish units preparing for deployments and assisting the [REDACTED] with high value interrogations in [REDACTED].

Following four years as an intelligence liaison, Lina was selected for undercover operations supporting the Polish contingent of the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT).  Lina’s mission was force protection, gathering intelligence on credible threats against the Polish contingent located in camp Iriba, near Abeche, Chad.  Her activities focused primarily on the Janjaweed militias that operated between Sudan and eastern Chad.  To blend in, Lina operated disguised as a local, easily done at a distance given the low flowing robes and shemagh commonly worn in the desert.  In urban areas, she relied on stealth to avoid detection when meeting with informants.  Thanks to her intelligence, Polish units were able to operate without major incident and support UN relief efforts.

Her performance in Central Africa should have secured her a long overdue promotion, but one intelligence report sabotaged her career.  While traveling alone between Biltine and Guereda, Lina stumbled upon the crash site of what she had described as an extra-terrestrial craft.  Within hours of the crash however, the site was sanitized, but by whom was as much a mystery as the source of the craft.  Lina’s report, filed by SAT terminal, was quickly suppressed by the new Służba Kontrwywiadu Wojskowego (Military Counter-intelligence Service).  Lina was labeled a non-reliable and her career in Military Intelligence suffered greatly for it.

Fortunately her service in Chad and Sudan had put her on Jednostka Wojskowa GROM's radar. The unit had recently begun an aggressive campaign to recruit women to serve in intelligence roles and Lina was a prime candidate given her background and  strong desire to leave Służba Wywiadu Wojskowego (Military Intelligence Service).  For the SOF unit, MI's loss was their gain and at least now they didn't have to worry about divided loyalties or if Lina was an MI plant.  Working with a personal trainer for three-months, Kowalska developed the strength and endurance she would need to pass the rigorous selection process.  Following airborne training at 6th Airborne Brigade's training center near Krakow, Lina entered the GROM training pipeline.  Upon completion she was assigned to a deniable classified intelligence gathering operation monitoring Russian troop strength in Kaliningrad in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  After Kaliningrad, Lina accepted an assignment to Task Force 47.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:48, Mon 13 Feb 2017.

Sébastien Durand
Age: 40
Languages spoken: French (Native speaker); English (fluent); Arabic (fluent)

Salut,

My name’s Sébastien Durand. I was born in Paris, France in 1975. I’ve got one brother, Jerome, who’s two years older than me, and one sister, Susanne, who’s five years younger. My father is Marc Durand. He’s a member of the French Senate, has been since 1995, initially for Sarkozy’s Party, the RPR, the Rassemblement pour la République before they merged with a couple of others to form the UMP, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. So yeah, my father knows a few people. My mother died in ’05. Cancer. My sister and I get on great but I'm not what you would call close to my father or my brother. Jerome's a senior executive with Total and Susanne works for one of the United Nations agencies in Geneva now.

I went to a good lycée, or High School, graduated in 1993. My grades were good enough that I could have gone right on to University, but I decided to join the military instead. Maybe I wanted to prove a point to my father, I don’t know. Either way, I enlisted in the Fusiliers Marins, the French Navy’s marines. My father was not happy about my decision – he had no issue with me joining the military per se, but he thought it should be as an officer.  Like I said, me and my dad aren't real close.

My first year was split between shore duties at the Brest Naval base then six months as part of the marine contingent aboard the Clemenceau. I wanted a bit more action though, a bit of excitement - you do when you're twenty years old, don't you - so after I came off le Clem I applied for the Commandos Marine, the Special Forces arm of the French Navy. The training was twenty weeks of pure hell at the Commando Training Centre at Lorient, but I made it through, traded my dark blue beret for the béret vert, the Green Beret, and was assigned to Commando Jaubert, which specialized in maritime assault, exfil operations, and hostage rescue.

I can’t really talk about a lot of the stuff that we did. There were a lot of black ops, doing things that we weren't supposed to be doing in places that we weren't supposed to be. A lot of our time was spent in Africa, although we lifted a few people in the Balkans in ‘98 and ‘99, guys that had blood on their hands from the fighting there. We'd spend days, sometimes weeks  watching, waiting for the moment to make the snatch. Sometimes we worked with French Intelligence, the DGSE. I enrolled on a distance learning course with the University of Strasbourg at the start of 2000, studying psychology. Understanding the human mind, why people behave the way that they do, was always something that had interested me. After September 11th I spent a lot of time in North Africa, giving the Algerians covert support in the Maghreb. I did one deployment to Afghanistan in 2004. We were based around Kandahar, saw a good bit of action. The bastards even managed to wound me, nothing serious, a flesh wound to the upper left arm. I've still got the scar. In my downtime I’d usually end up with my nose buried in a psych textbook.

I completed my degree in 2006. By then I had decided it was time to quit the military, although I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I'd picked up a good bit of Arabic when I'd been in Algeria, so I thought I might be able to get some work as a security consultant in the Gulf, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that, somewhere the salaries are tax free. Two months before I was due to get out my CO ‘invited’ me to meet with some people for a chat. It turned out they were from the DGSE. I guess one thing must have led to another and they offered me the chance to join the DGSE’s Operations Division. I left the Commandos in the late summer of '06, at which point I held the rank of Maître, which is roughly the equivalent to a Staff Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps.

I was in Libya when Khadafy fell, have spent time in Iraq, Syria, Mali, working with groups that were supposed to be  friendly to France, rebels, opposition groups, the so called moderates. Moderate my arse. The World isn’t black and white, it’s a hell of a lot of shades of grey. The people that want to be your friends today will quite happily fuck you over tomorrow.  Our operations were always deniable. We all knew that if we finished up in the hands of the Islamists we were fucked.

In 2009  I decided to do my Masters in Psychology, this time at the UPMC, the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, part of the Sorbonne in Paris.  My career was doing OK.

Until Somalia.

August 2013. A French family had decided to sail their yacht around the World. Mother, father, and two kids, a fifteen year old boy and an eighteen year old girl. Silly bastards sailed too close to fucking Somalia didn't they, the pirates got them. I got sent to Mogadishu with another officer, a woman called Barthez. Our job was to get the family out. It took us four months to find out where they were being held, four months of coercing our sources, bribing them, squeezing them, Four months to get the name of the camp where they were being held. The Intel was solid. Times had changed, and the powers that be decided there wasn't going to be a ransom. They wanted direct action. Storm the camp, kill the terrorist fuckers and rescue the family, a heroic homecoming at Le Bourget in front of the world’s cameras.

The guys going in on the ground, were some of my old mates from Commando Jaubert. They came in by helicopter from the Indian Ocean, twenty five of them. I watched the whole thing on a satellite feed at our compound in the Mog. It all went fucking wrong. When the firefight was over we'd lost one man killed and another seriously wounded. All the terrorists were dead – or soon would be - but there was no sign of the family anywhere. It turned out the Intel was bad. They'd been moved thirty six hours before we stormed the camp. So, the mission was a total fucking failure. They executed the parents two days later. The usual routine, the orange jumpsuits, the video uploaded to YouTube. No one knows what happened to the kids.

Of course it was all over the fucking news, but not in the way that had been intended.

Someone had to take the blame.

I'd been responsible for the Intel. Two civilians were dead, two more disappeared Christ knows where, one of our operators also dead, another will never walk again. A fucking disaster.

And so I got transferred to Guyane,  on secondment to the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, the National Centre for Space Studies. My job is to carry out threat assessments, run red team exercises, that sort of thing.  Out of sight, out of mind, just until the fuss has died down they said. Not a punishment. Yeah, sure. That was nearly a year ago. I finished my Masters degree three months ago via distance learning - handy thing the internet.  Coincidentally enough, my Thesis was on how technology affects cognitive thought.

So...c'est moi...Sébastien Durand...what else is there?

I was raised Catholic, but I don’t practice any more. I’ve seen too much shit done in the name of religion over the years for it to mean much to me. I've never been married, no kids either. Sure, I've had girlfriends, one or two of them got serious. I think the longest relationship I had was with a woman called Sophie that I met when I was stationed at Lorient as an instructor in 2002. We were together for three years, but I was probably only around for ten months of that - it's the old cliché when you're in the military - the Commandos fucked up a lot of marriages. After the fuck up in Somalia Barthez and I got together a few times after we got back to France, but it wasn't anything serious and I haven't seen her since I got seconded to Guyane. The good thing about seeing someone that's in the job is that at least they understand what it's like, don't expect you home for dinner every night.

I try to keep myself in good shape, but I'm forty years old now, so I guess I'm not as strong or as nimble as I once was. Joys of getting old...I can handle a weapon, I've killed people, sometimes I've looked them in the eyes when I did it. Most of them probably deserved to die. Maybe some of them didn't, but it's not something that I lose sleep over. I don't know where my career is headed right now. You don't exactly see people lining up to volunteer for duty in Guyane. I know I could pick up work in the private sector no problem, so had been thinking that maybe it's time to revisit that option.

Then I got a call to come back to Paris...
This message was last edited by the player at 15:54, Thu 06 Nov 2014.

Group Captain Grant Mewes, RAF (NPC)
Call Sign: Mechanic
Nationality: British
Current Assignment: Commander, Task Force 47
Age: 46

TF47's commanding officer is a career RAF aviator, though he's spent several stretches in the RAF's intelligence apparatus.  He was a founding member of the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing, is rated as an instructor pilot on the Sea King and Chinook airframes, and is type-qualified in several other aircraft, both fixed- and rotary-wing.  A lifelong frustrated astronaut candidate, he holds master's degrees in atmospheric science and astrophysics.  A consultancy with Virgin Galactic is waiting for him whenever he chooses to retire.

Group Captain Mewes is a calm, affable, and even-handed officer with a weapons-grade vocabulary.  He's not a doorkicker by nature or training, which makes him an odd choice to command a unit like TF47, but on more than one occasion he's landed his bird with door guns shot dry and an airframe that looks like a colander.  He is easy for the uninitiated to underestimate.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:08, Sat 28 Mar 2015.

Kapitein Bram Maatsen, Korps Mariniers (NPC)
Nationality: Dutch
Current Assignment: Executive Officer, Task Force 47
Age: 34

Originally from the Dutch Antilles, Bram Maatsen joined the Netherlands' marine corps for travel and adventure.  Small fast boats, parachutes, and automatic weapons were bonuses as far as he was concerned.  Aside from a few token contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, the Netherlands weren't likely to go to war.

That attitude lasted until the autumn of 2001, when the country started taking its NATO treaty obligations seriously again.  Since then, Maatsen has seen combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Congo, and the Somali coast, and he's left fragments of his carefree youth strewn along the path of each deployment.  In 2005, he was selected for the Unit Interventie Mariniers, the Dutch maritime counter-terrorist force.

An experienced commando and small unit leader, Captain Maatsen is an effective but restless XO for the task force.  The unit's small size means he usually dons the additional hat of operations officer, deploying forward to supervise and support the direct-action teams, but he chafes under the need to stay in the "back office" rather than going into the field.  His diction is mechanically precise in every language he speaks (of which there are several), a bit of overcompensation for a former speech impediment that was surgically corrected in his early twenties.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:40, Sun 09 Nov 2014.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ted Bannon, USN (NPC)
Call Sign: Nemesis
Nationality: Alaskan-American
Current Assignment: Intelligence Section Chief, Task Force 47
Age: 48

The aphorism about old age and treachery may have been written with Ted Bannon in mind.  Originally a Seabee who joined the Navy because it would pay for his education, Bannon somehow slid sideways into the special operations world early in his career.  He rose to senior enlisted rank before accepting a warrant officer's commission, moving grudgingly from team leadership to operational intelligence and planning.  He's no longer able to hang with the young guys, due in no small part to two sets of bullet wounds that should have killed him, but he's still pretty handy with a rifle, a knife, or a demolition charge.

Chief Bannon runs the task force's operational intelligence group, generating and presenting the information that teams going into the field will need to survive.  He smokes the harshest available cigarettes, thinks "fuck" is punctuation, and doesn't respect anyone who can't respond to one of his insults within a five-second window.  He has hunted big game on every continent but Antarctica and is constantly snacking on jerky made from some exotic animal or another.  He also bakes.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:48, Sat 28 Mar 2015.

Corporal Caradoc Crewe, 21st SAS (NPC)
Nationality: British (Welsh)
Current Assignment: Grey Cell
Age: 34
Languages: English (native), Welsh (native), Arabic (basic), Bengali (basic), French (conversational)

The son of old-money aristocrats who considered themselves citizens of the world, Caradoc Crewe grew up a starry-eyed idealist, determined to make the world a better place.  This resolve lasted until his third year of medical school at Swansea University.  In lieu of another term of clinicals, Caradoc deployed with a Médecins Sans Frontières aid mission in Sudan.  It seemed like a good idea until the group was taken hostage by a Janjaweed militia warlord.  Five months of confinement and brutality eroded Caradoc's pacifism and naiveté to nothing before he was rescued in a Special Air Service operation.

The SAS' actions in Sudan and conversations with the troopers on the way home made an immeasurable impression on him, too.  His first action upon returning to Wales was to enlist in the Territorial Army, hoping to find a way to pay back the establishment that had saved his life.  Once he learned that the TA contained its own SAS contingents, his ultimate goal was set.

Although Caradoc did complete his medical school curriculum, he's never actually finished the process of becoming a licensed physician.  He fears that as soon as he's officially a doctor, the Army will yank him out of the SAS, pin a commission on him, and stuff him in a base clinic for the rest of his career.  In the SAS, he's just another trooper and medic - albeit one with quite a bit more formal education than his mates - and he's found that he rather likes it that way.

In his spare time, Caradoc competes in triathlons and pentathlons across the UK.  He also has a convert's fervor for shooting and finds it hard to pass up an opportunity to handle a new or unfamiliar gun.  He's fiercely proud of his Welsh heritage and wears the Red Dragon instead of the Union Jack whenever he thinks he can get away with it.  The only time his affable demeanor darkens is when the topic of family arises.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:25, Mon 09 Mar 2015.

Special Agent James Choi, FBI HRT
Nationality: American (USA)
Current Assignment: Grey Cell
Languages Spoken: English (Native), Korean (Proficient), Spanish (Basic)
Age: 32

James Choi is third generation Korean-American. His parents are the hard-charging, achieve-at-all-costs, hyper-assimilated second generation types. Jimmy was pushed from an early age and he learned young how to push back. Academics were priority one, set by Jim's family, and he excelled in school, despite a mild case of ADHD, a diagnosis that his parents rejected out of hand. A very active boy, he constantly sought physical outlets for his almost boundless energy. Sports held an early attraction for him, but Jimmy's overprotective mother vetoed anything she perceived as dangerous. Football was automatically eliminated as an option, as were all other contact sports. After a playground bloody nose, so was soccer and, by extension every other team sport. Throughout middle and high school, Jim ran track, swam, and played golf and tennis, but his greatest coup was convincing his parents to allow him to take Tae Kwon Do by appealing to their ethnic pride and shared Korean heritage. Starting at age 11, Jim flourished in the martial art, achieving his black belt before graduating from high school.

College brought Jim's parents great expectations into even greater focus. His prescribed career choices were medicine and law. As an undergrad, he did his best to juggle prerequisites for both but the load was too great. Knowing that his parents preferred their son become a doctor, he chose law. Law school, however, was a let down- too much talking and not enough doing. Despite his misgivings, he performed well, and could have landed a job at a prestigious firm, but the thought of life stuck in an office was too much for Jimmy to bear. Out from under the financial obligations which tied him to the course that his parents had laid out for him, Jimmy did the almost unforgivable- he skipped out on taking the bar exam and applied to join the FBI instead. It would be nearly a year before his parents spoke to him again.

Family drama aside, Jimmy enjoyed the academy, moreso than any other scholastic setting he'd experienced, it giving him the physical component so absent from academia. He graduated near the top of his class. Citing his law school experience, the FBI initially assigned Jimmy to a desk job, 12-hour days shuffling through paperwork, trying to bust white collar criminals, few of whom did any hard time as a result of his efforts. He was not happy. He doggedly pestered his superiors for a transfer to the field and they finally acquiesced, shipping him off to the low-glamour Albuquerque regional field office. Jim went from high-rise desk to high desert, mostly working cases on the sprawling Navajo Indian reservation spanning the Four Corners area. It was there that he had his first experience with the unexplained.

Two weeks after a white suburban cheerleader from Santa Fe was reported kidnapped, the sixteen-year-old girl was found wandering a back road in the least civilized corner of the rez. After hours of interviews, the girl reluctantly, but with great belief and sincerity, claimed that she had been taken on a journey aboard an alien spacecraft. Viable suspects were quickly ruled out, and psychological evaluations and two polygraph tests confirmed that the girl wholeheartedly believed what she was saying. A ransom note found days after the girl's disappearance later turned out to be a ill-conceived high school prank. The girl's well-to-do parents "enrolled" her in a swanky outpatient psychiatric care facility, the case was closed for lack of evidence, and Jimmy moved on.

The itch for action that Jimmy had suffered from since childhood could no longer be ignored. In order to deal with increasingly violent drug traffickers operating on the reservation, the Navajo tribal police sought to develop an in-house tactical assault capability. The FBI regional tactical operations unit from Albuquerque was tasked with training the seminal tribal SWAT team. As a corollary to his tribal connections, Jimmy was asked to serve as liaison. He worked closely with the teams, participated in the training as both instructor and student, and joined the tribal SWAT unit on several of its early field operations. He quickly got a taste for adrenaline cycle of tactical ops, and with the endorsement of his branch office and its tactical chief, he applied for the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team. Without prior military or long-term special weapons and tactics experience, Jimmy was a long-shot for acceptance, but thanks to a few pulled strings and a low key, in-house diversity initiative, he was accepted and packed his bags once again for Quantico. Despite his lack of trigger time, he made it through selection and training with flying colors, earning a coveted spot on the team.

HRT life turned out to be almost everything he'd been searching for since childhood. He thrived as a field operator, nabbing bank robbers, cop-killers, and secessionist miltiamen. His FBI career nearly came to a screeching halt, however, on one ill-fated field op in Manila. An American citizen of Filipino ancestry suspected of involvement in terrorist activities was targeted for arrest and the HRT was brought in to enhance the operation's veneer of Constitutional legality. Fortunately for Jimmy, he drew one of the short straws and was assigned to the support team. The entry team shot first and, in the brief one-sided gun battle that ensued, a teenaged boy and a middle-aged woman, both blood relations of the suspect, were killed. The suspect's pre-school aged stepdaughter was badly wounded. The unit was yanked from the field, unceremoniously returned to the United States, and the entire entry team promptly cashiered. The PR shit-storm took months to die down and Jimmy was pulled from the field for the duration.

A year after returning to active duty, Jimmy's next big op would set him on the final leg of his path to joining Grey Cell. Electronic intelligence, collected and analyzed by the NSA, suggesting an imminent attack on the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was developed and the HRT called in to surveil and take down the cell. During the gunfight triggered by the arrest attempt, the three suspects were shot multiple times and killed. What happened next continues to defy conventional scientific explanation. One of the suspects, having taken four 10mm rounds center mass and declared dead on the scene by paramedics, somehow revived and let himself out of his body bag at the county coroner's office, killing, with his bare hands, one lab tech and a severely injuring two sheriff's deputies before Jimmy, who'd accompanied the corpses to maintain chain of custody for the Bureau, intervened. Two .45 hollow points between the undead man's oddly reptilian eyes put the suspect down for good. The entire incident was caught on the morgue's surveillance cameras. After hours of debriefing, Jimmy was cleared of any wrongdoing and ordered never to speak of the incident again. Six months later, Jimmy was approached to join Grey Cell. Searching for answers and aware that his career prospects in the Bureau were irreparably damaged, he accepted the offer without hesitation.

James Choi is just shy of six feet tall and well built, his years of Tae Kwon Do, weight training, and distance running producing a lean but muscular frame. He's got dark hair, worn stylishly short, but not short enough to reveal scalp. He's rather good looking, but his rather transient, demanding, and fast-paced work life has precluded any long-term romantic relationships.

PSYCH PROFILE TO FOLLOW.

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This message was last edited by the player at 02:12, Fri 05 Dec 2014.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kjersti Hannah Omdahl, US Army Aviator
Nationality:         American (United States)
Current Assignment:  17th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Squadron, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade
MOS:                 153M72BNR
Languages Spoken:    English (Native), Norwegian (Fluent), Arabic (Pidgin)
Age/Birthplace:      32/Bemidji, MN, USA

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Born Kjersti Hannah Omdahl, Hannah is a trim light-brown brunette of average height, light build and prominent Norwegian ancestry.  Her eyes are a pale blue-grey with a touch of green or hazel (depending on the light - and if you can get close enough).  She hails from one of the suburbs (if such really can be said to exist) of Bemidji, Minnesota.  Only her family uses her first name, often shortening it to 'Kris' or 'Kristi'.   Ever since junior high, Hannah introduced herself as 'Hannah' seeming to prefer her middle name.

Her parents, Tomas and Elin Omdahl, were already fifth generation immigrants; and both of her parents families had been farmers for many generations.   Tomas was a retired army staff sergeant, having served as a wheeled vehicle mechanic with the 5th infantry division in Vietnam; though he saw plenty of action, Tomas rarely spoke of his time in Southeast Asia to his family.  Hannah has always known him to be a rather quiet and cool-headed, but loving father - if sometimes a touch distant.  Still, the Omdahl patriarch doted on his only daughter a fair bit.  Her mother was a school teacher at Bemidji High School.  A good educator, Elin always pushed her children to excel, taking great pride in their achievements.

The fourth of five children, all of the rest of whom are boys, Hannah's childhood can be said to be rather idyllic.  A bit of a tomboy, Hannah was always trying to keep up with her brothers whether it was on the ice, in the water or on the road.  She swam competitively and learned to drive both cars and motorcycles at an early age.  Feeling that self-sufficiency was important, Tomas taught his daughter basic mechanics (which she did seem to have an aptitude for) as well as some self-defense.

Hannah joined the army out of high school.  Though her grades were solid, they weren't great.  Unable to obtain a merit scholarship and being fourth in the line, her family couldn't afford to send her to college. Given her mechanical aptitude, Hannah was trained as an aviation mechanic and then assigned to the 17th Cavalry Regiment, 21st Squadron, 82nd Airborne Combat Aviation Brigade.  Though he never said anything about it, Hannah suspects that her father was proud enough.  It was quite obvious that her choice of service and specialty were influenced by the elder Omdahl.  She carried herself with distinction and was promoted to sergeant in fairly short order.  However, Hannah longed not to just work on the helicopters, but to fly them.

So, she devised a plan to become a warrant officer and an aviator.  But to do that, she felt that she needed to get her college degree first.  While, it wasn't a strict requirement to have such an education (only a high school diploma is officially required to apply), Hannah felt that for herself that she needed to have a better theoretical grounding to really get the most out of herself and technology.  And with the GI Bill, it seemed the Uncle Sam was more than willing to accommodate her.

Hannah spent the next four years getting her bachelor's degree in Engineering at Georgia Tech.  Again she got quite good, if not stellar grades.  And she got a good grounding in both aeronautical engineering and material science.  She insisted on working with her hands, helping to set up a laboratory and some experimental apparatus as part of her undergraduate thesis project to supplement her book learning.  Though friendly enough, Hannah found herself a bit of a fish out of water, being older than most undergraduates in her class and in a climate much further south than she was raised in.  She spent a fair amount of time in the gym, and in particular worked on her physical coordination and flexibility by studying aikido and judo.

Equipped with her degree, Hannah applied for the Warrant Officer Flight Training program and was accepted.  Her specialization was with the UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter.  And once she was done with the training, Hannah was assigned back to the 17th Cavalry Regiment - but this time in the 2nd Squadron, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade.  She must have impressed her instructors somewhat to get posted to one of the most highly decorated units in the US Army, and one with a fair amount of tradition to uphold.  She named her bird, Migizi ('Bald Eagle' in Ojibwe, 'Migs' for short).

Not surprisingly, Hannah has seen plenty of action with the 101st Airborne stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan during her time with the unit.  Warrant Officer (and eventually Chief Warrant Officer) Omdahl has flown a number of missions in both theaters.  And Hannah was well known for her skill, her willingness, and her courage to put her Blackhawk down wherever necessary, especially with men's lives at stake.  More than once she put her UH-60M down on a roof of a car or in other tight quarters in order for an injured squad-mate to be able to be extracted or her team to gain a tactical advantage on or near a hot LZ.  Hannah has proven to have inherited (or learned) more than a touch of levelheadedness from her father; she only hopes that her actions have made him (and her mother) proud.

About half a year ago, just over two years into her present tour, Hannah's unit came under heavy fire during a mission extraction in north of Kandahar.  Both Hannah and Migizi were damaged:  she was hit in the right leg and lower abdomen, while her Blackhawk had its hydraulics damaged.  The latter pretty requiring Hannah to fly and land the craft effectively on manual reversion.  It was only with an act of sheer willpower and determination (as well as a fair bit of skill and even more luck) that she was able to make it back to base with her squad alive.  But make it home she did, and with the UH-60M and her platoon-mates (relatively) intact.  However, Hannah had lost a lot of blood has spent the last couple of months recovering from her wounds and then undergoing extensive physical therapy in order to get herself reinstated back to active flight status.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:08, Fri 14 Nov 2014.

Barbrak Tarabi (NPC)
Call Sign: Barfight
Nationality: Afghani
Current Assignment: Flight Engineer, Task Force 47
Age: 51

Barbrak's erratic career in military aviation began in late 1979 when a Soviet Air Force officer promoted him from janitor to apprentice aircraft mechanic.  When the Soviets left Afghanistan, he declined an offer of citizenship, perceiving (correctly) that he would have been a dancing bear in Russia.  Instead, he stayed with the Afghan Air Force, where he found himself fighting a losing battle against incompetence, corruption, and a nonexistent maintenance budget.  As the country descended into civil war, he fled with his wife and daughters to the Panjshir Valley and entered the service of Ahmad Shah Massoud's Northern Alliance.

Barbrak's shady association with Ted Bannon goes back to the early days of American post-9/11 involvement in Afghanistan.  No one - except possibly Grant Mewes - is entirely certain how an Afghani civilian became attached to a NATO black-world task force.  However, given his demonstrated expertise with the ex-Soviet airframes that TF47 operates, no one wants to examine the issue too closely, either.

Barbrak is a short, gnarled, cheerful man with a ready frog-wide grin.  He's an unabashed convert to American-style consumerism and a World of Warcraft addict.  He has two daughters in college (20 and 23).  On paper, his employer is the US Navy in the form of San Diego's NAS North Island, and he has a house in San Diego where his wife of 33 years is quite content to enjoy the peace and quiet while he's on deployment.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:56, Mon 18 Jan 2016.

White Cell is TF47's first intelligence and direct action team, formed in early 2014.


Current Roster


Major Flynn Bryant, Team Leader (American)
Team Nickname: Bear

USMC Force Recon (with a few years spent out of uniform at CIA's Directorate of Operations).  Master's in history from Georgetown.  College football fanatic.


Lt. Cdr. (RN) Colin MacLeod (Scottish)
Team Nickname: Connor

Formerly SBS, then Joint Forces Intelligence Group.  Surveillance and communications technologist.  Medieval combat re-enactor; constantly in conflict with Major Bryant over "historically accurate" versus "looks cool."


SSgt. Leigh Solak (American)
Team Nicknames: BB, CSI

Fluent in Farsi, Turkish, Arabic, Pashto, Greek.  Former NYPD crime scene technician before enlisting in the Army, working as an interpreter, and eventually getting picked up by the Intelligence Support Activity.


Korporal Asbjørn Hummel (Danish)
Team Nickname: unassigned

Jægerkorpset demo/EOD specialist.  Replacement for Oberfeldwebel Geerts.


Three additional personnel left undefined to allow future working room...


Former Members


Oberfeldwebel Gerhardt Geerts (German)
Team Nicknames: Tyvek, Gerhardon

EOD and WMD specialist, seconded from KSK.  KIA near the Iran-Azerbaijan border during Operation PEASANT WRENCH (May 2015).
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:44, Sun 14 Aug 2016.

Green Cell is TF47's logistics and technical and scientific support.  Initially staffed at 30 personnel, it's in the midst of a significant expansion and may wind up being split into separate logistics and science structures.


Notable Members


Dr. Sabah ud-Din Talib Boulos
Nationality: Libyan
Specialty: Mechanical engineering
TF47 Projects: Metallurgical analysis of alien artifacts

Extracted from Libya during Operation VEHEMENT HARPIST as payment for his assistance in locating Satish and Jayashri Tamboli, with whom he'd previously worked in Libya's WMD program.  Subsequently requested to join TF47, having seen too much to let the operation go.  Involved in long-running covert triad relationship with both Tambolis.


Dr. Jeannette Ghosten
Nationality: American
Specialty: Neuroscience
TF47 Projects: BELCOURT MALLARD analysis

Acerbic Cal-Tech graduate, later Stanford professor at the murky intersection of neurophysiology, bio-engineering, bio-physics, and electrical engineering.  Has an "it's complicated" personal history with TSgt. Dacovetti.


Sergeant Zane "Crit" Crittenden
Nationality: Australian
Call Sign: Green 42
Specialty: Communications and electronic warfare
TF47 Projects: WILDWOOD GROUSE analysis, RETICLE development

Cambridge-educated surf-god (played in the miniseries by Chris Hemsworth).  Formerly of 152 Signal Squadron, SASR.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:28, Sat 26 Nov 2016.

In addition to Green Cell, TF47's controlling authorities maintain a wide network of scientific and investigative practitioners in a diverse array of specialties.

Notable Affiliates


Dr. Simon Gellner
Nationality: Israeli-American (dual citizenship)
Specialties: Liguistics, Parapsychology
TF47 Projects: Unrevealed

Late sixties, always dressed formally and a trifle archaically.  Research fellow with the Rhine Center.

Amber Cell is TF47's field operations support.  Originally constituted as a pure TOC staff, it is expanding to provide an additional combat role with the addition of qualified (and psychologically-screened) shooters.

Notable Members

CWO3 Ted Bannon - see individual profile, above.

Barbrak Tarabi - see individual profile, above.


Feldwebel Marie Kohl (German)
Call Sign: Amber Five

Detached from Bundeswehr military intelligence.  Former intel liaison with the Bundespolizei.  On the books as an image analyst; unofficially, she's Bannon's right hand for undercover work.


Sergent-Chef Christophe Vidry (French)
Call Sign: Leopard Frog

Leader of a detachment of CPA 10 air commandos seconded to TF 47 after the encounter in Tripoli.


Caporal-Chef Daimien Poirier (French)
Call Sign: unassigned

Master scrounger.  Widely known to be willing to try any local food, no matter what it is or how it's prepared or presented.


Caporal Corin Sauvageot (French)
Call Sign: unassigned

CPA 10 air commando.  Gun collector; competitive pistol marksman.  Loaned his personal MR73 to Michael in Tripoli.


Caporal Tristan Baudin (French)
Call Sign: Baldy

CPA 10 air commando; former CPA 30 CSAR flight mechanic.  Available door gunner for TF47 helicopters.  Can also serve as backup for Barbrak on aircraft maintenance issues.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:42, Sat 26 Nov 2016.

Diego Martinez
Callsign: Saint
SSgt USAF, Pararescue
Age: 31
Languages: English (native), Spanish (native), Chinese (fluent)
Weapon preference: whatever's on draft

Diego Jesus Martinez was born in East LA, the youngest child and only son of a single immigrant mother that blessed him with four older sisters.  From the get go, he was expected to be the "man of the house," and was consequently pampered and held to impossible standards.  His mother gave him a devout Catholic faith, and after the Rodney King riots of the early 90's, kept him on such a short chain that he choices were to be at home, at school, or at church.  That kept him safe, if cloistered.  It did give him the opportunity pick up a smattering of Chinese.  Mainly do to an interest in Bruce Lee and a cute girl.

He managed to get through high school and was able to attend a small liberal arts college in on the East Coast on a scholarship for "disadvantaged youth and diversity."  The quiet rolling hills and forest were like nothing he had seen before.  He quickly fell in love with the land and the distance between both his mother and the shit-show that LA had become.  The quiet was profound and stirred something in his faith.  Instead of sleeping in his dorm room, he bought a second hand sleeping bag at a Goodwill store and started sleeping outside where he could see the stars every night.  He also fell in love with bad movies and pop-culture in general, something that he'd never been able to watch in his mother's home.  He received a double major in Chemistry and Biology after four years in the woods.

While Diego and his mother had their sights set on medical school, his MCAT scores felt otherwise.  Instead, he decided to go after a more exciting path to trauma medicine, intending to reapply to medical school after six years in the Air Force.  Maybe this time with some practical skills.  Turned out being a PJ was just too much damn fun.  When the first six years was up, he signed on enthusiastically for six more.

Martinez became acquainted with Grey Cell when he was loaned out to replace their former medic who had been severely injured during operations against the alien threat.  He's acutely aware that he isn't the unit's first medic and he has no intention of replacing Crewe in their eyes.

Diego has a self-deprecating sense of humor that hides his intellect and education.  When he does speak up, it's usually in a blend of pop references and insight.  He's a damn good medic and having him sent off to Grey Cell will complicate the missions of his former STS.  It does, however, allow Gray Cell to skip the potential operational compromise of having to read another individual in.  Sending him back to the outside after being exposed to the Belize sight would have induced all kinds of headaches in the rear echelon.