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ASHER WILDE</center>
__________________Q uick Stats Name: Asher Wilde
Aliases: James Liddell, or more as he thinks of them
Nick-names: He gets extremely annoyed if anyone calls him something other than the name he gave them.
Image: <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/tafkae/Asher1.jpg">lol stock background.[/url]
Birthday: July 18th
Age: 21
Gender: male
Sexual Orientation: straight, but largely disinterested
Single or Taken?: single
Species: human
Blood-type: B-
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 145 lbs
Eye Color: pale blue
Hair Color: blond
Affiliation: none yet
Religion: apathetic; he doesn't believe in any higher power himself, or care whether anybody else does.
Occupation: Brain for hire. He touts himself as the espionage and planning guy, but doesn't really have steady work.
Birth Place: Space Station Libra (but grew up on a minor station elsewhere)
Location: Space Station Cancer
Finished Threads: Current Threads: __________________I n-Depth Stuff: Physical Description: Asher is on the low end of average height, and naturally lean; physically he's not very imposing. He has blond hair that is theoretically short, but in reality could probably stand a trip to the barber. He has fairly pale skin, having lived in the darkness of space his whole life, and pale blue eyes. He's extremely farsighted, which could easily be corrected by surgery or magic except that he doesn't trust anyone messing with his eyes; instead he wears a pair of half-moon eyeglasses to compensate. (They're the most expensive thing he owns right now, since between contacts, magic, and surgery, not many people make plain old glasses anymore.) He tries to dress nicely, often seen in shirtsleeves and a vest.
Personality: Typically, Asher tends more or less toward the quiet and impersonal side, preferring to remain in the background. Everybody else can have the glory; all he's concerned with is getting paid. He keeps himself as objective and logically grounded as he can whenever possible, which can make him come off as cruel, insensitive, or manipulative. In some ways, he is; he is the center of his own universe and he could care less what happens to other people if it doesn't affect him. He forges alliances when he has to, since he's aware of his own less-than-stellar performance on the combat front, but if they don't work out, he's just as likely to ditch for a better offer or sell out altogether, whatever serves his own interests.
And his own interests? Primarily, not getting caught. He's grown up with the stories of what they (supposedly) do to psychics on Earth and Mars, and has no intention of visiting either under any circumstances, whether or not the rumors he's heard are all necessarily true. His secondary interests center around making money, not toward any particular goal or out of liking to spend it, but just so he'll have it if he needs it.
Weaknesses: Firstly, he's paranoid. He's always wary of strangers, even if he treats them civilly; he prefers to stick to people he knows and has built up some trust with, if at all possible. He's also self-centered, seeing people mainly in terms of how they can work to his own advantage. He doesn't do well in direct leadership roles, more apt to fill the role of strings-puller, and will quickly try to get rid of any direct responsibility that he winds up with. Overall, his personality doesn't lend itself well to long-term relationships, although he's not by any means incapable of liking people.
He has no skill at all with guns or any other kind of weaponry, beyond "trigger makes it go bang." His vision is bad, and his aim is worse. In any kind of melee combat, he'd rely solely on his telekinesis, and even then only to buy him time to escape.
Strengths: Asher is clever and cunning, and good with words and twisting them. He's very thrifty... well, actually he's kind of a tightwad most of the time. In any case, he goes to great lengths to avoid running out of money. He gets a certain thrill out of outsmarting people, especially in high-risk situations.
Likes: real fruit (he
loves it, especially the stuff from Edanith), money, his grandma
Dislikes: doctors, mages, scientists, other psychics, authority figures, arrogance, anyone who won't listen to reason, bounced checks, alcohol or drugs
Magic/Abilities: Asher is a pretty powerful telepath, able to read the thoughts or memories of others, or send them his own, with relatively little effort. The strength of his telepathy decreases exponentially with physical distance, petering out altogether at a little under a mile. (Because of this, he doesn't like communicating with people long-distance, as it's nearly impossible to read their real intentions.) He's unconsciously clairvoyant, but only enough to walk around an unfamiliar room blindfolded without running into anything.
He's also moderately telekinetic. He can lift small, nearby objects effortlessly, but has more trouble with larger things. Something the mass of a human being would require his full concentration, even at short distances; really large objects would be very difficult and cause him severe mental strain, if he could move them at all. Gravity or lack thereof has no bearing on this ability; it works only with regard to mass and inertia.
He has a natural gift for piloting, but has never piloted anything to know this, and is in fact afraid to try.
Family: He was raised by his grandmother, Jennifer Wilde, who still sends him things from time to time. His parents (Jim and Alice Young) live and work on Libra, so far as he knows, but Asher hasn't had any contact with them since he was seven. (Jim is his only direct psychic relative.) He has one younger sister, but doesn't know she exists.
Friends: None known
Foes: None known
History: Asher was the unlucky child of two researchers from Libra who hadn't planned on having children. They went on with their lives as usual, which left him constantly being babysat by his grandmother. His talents first came to light in his early school years, at which point his parents finally began to pay attention to him, but it was primarily in a research capacity, with the ultimate goal of grooming him into either a researcher himself or a psychological test subject.
When Grandma Jen found out about this, she was furious; she felt she cared about her grandson more than his parents did. It led to an animosity between her and her daughter that grew steadily over the next two years, until finally, Asher's mother hired a nanny and told Grandma Jen not to visit anymore if she was going to tell her how to raise her own children. Grandma Jen responded by kidnapping seven-year-old Asher and moving to a space station much closer to the inner planets. They were never caught.
The rest of his childhood was fairly uneventful, once he got over the crushing realization that they weren't going home. They lived well enough, if not as well as they had before the expensive move. Knowing she couldn't hide the truth (since he was psychic), his grandmother made it sound like his parents had just thought of him as a hunk of meat, though this was of course not true at all.
Asher routinely abused his powers during his early school years, and was routinely punished for it - even after he learned his lesson and stopped. That taught him that the only way to avoid getting in trouble was to keep anybody from knowing what he could do in the first place, and although he still cheated (not all the time, but fairly often), he got more and more discreet about it as time went on.
He graduated at age 17, per usual, and shortly thereafter moved out of his grandma's place, looking for work. Unfortunately, he had trouble making rent, and he eventually signed onto the crew of a cargo ship passing through. It turned out, however, that the ship was actually smuggling illegal medicinal items between stations. They were caught at customs and very nearly arrested, but Asher managed to convince the officials the goods were legitimate, and they completed the delivery successfully.
However, they got shortchanged by the buyer anyway. The captain (to preserve the share he'd planned on getting) had to fire several of the crew without paying them, including Asher, who then spent the next month stranded and virtually broke before he managed to get a shipping job out of there. Probably the main reason he had so much trouble finding any was because he wouldn't take jobs without an advance, or go planetside.
But he did eventually manage to find work, and he's spent the last four years or so on various crews in varying capacities. Oddly, a lot of them were either marginally legal operations or flat-out illegal, but he adapted well to being on the wrong side of the law. It never particularly mattered to him what they were doing or why, only that he got properly paid for his efforts.
Commentary: My first concept of Asher six or seven years ago was this muscular idiot with an anger problem and a ship ripped off from Star Trek, I think. He's come a long way... o_o
