BASIC INFORMATION
Full name: Bransen Landon
Aliases: Bran, Muffin
Occupation: Pilot Noble, Inquisitor
Gender: Male
Age: 34
Height: 6’4”
Build: Muscular, upside down triangle
Race: Human?
Sexuality: Pansexual
Nationality: Aedolian
Residence: Ryun
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Bransen is tall and shaped very much like a wedge, with broad shoulders tapering down to a narrower waist and long legs. Years of physical conditioning have put decent muscle bulk on his long frame. Most people would probably consider him to have a nice body, and given his peak physical health he wouldn’t exactly disagree.
Dark brown hair is kept in a short military cut, and he tends to skip shaving several days in a row, so stubble is a near constant presence on his angular jaw. His eyes are as dark as his hair, and generally very serious. Much to his displeasure freckles are sprinkled over his cheeks and nose, but nowhere else.
Deeply tanned skin with rich copper undertones is riddled with a few major scars that are a lighter discoloration. There are three gunshot wounds on his abdomen, one on the lower right side closer to the hip bone, and two clustered close together on his left shoulder. There are a line of slash scars caused by claws on his right bicep and several faint lines scattered elsewhere on his body that appear to have been caused by knives.
He has two helix piercings in each ear, but no other piercings or tattoos.
PERSONALITY
Bransen is definitely an introvert. He is a man that prefers solitude, peace, and quiet over noisy crowds and lots of action – ironic given his many years of service as a combat operative. The man is quick as a whip and very sharp. His eidetic memory is partly to thank for this, but his personality is equally important in his level of intelligence. He loves to sit back and observe situations, soaking in all the information he can before actually taking any action.
It makes him methodical, which was great for combat operations, but will also be highly valued in his new field of work. Speaking of work, Bransen has a bad habit of being a workaholic and gets hyper-focused to the point of obsession on work-related things. This thankfully doesn’t carry over to his social life.
Actually his social life is rather lacking. Bransen doesn’t dislike people, not at all, but being around a lot of them at once or for extended periods of time is simply exhausting. He much prefers to get close to a few dear friends and keep an arm’s length between him and everyone else. Although these days he doesn’t really have even a few very close people to him and hasn’t for a long time. Losing Tomas was devastating and he still isn’t really over it more than a decade later. If he doesn’t get that close to someone else, then he can’t be hurt again, right? It makes sense to him.
SKILLS & PSIONICS
Telepathy: Lacking in any form of telekinetic ability, he more than makes up for it in his skill with telepathy. Bransen can communicate clearly with high numbers of people at once over considerable distances. It has proven invaluable for coordinating combat operations. In addition, he has demonstrated a talent for implanting subtle messages within other people’s subconscious. Outright mind control is impossible, of course, but he can certainly put very persuasive ideas in the heads of susceptible individuals.
Empathy: This skill has been put to great use in conjecture with his abilities of persuasion. While like most empaths Bransen can read the emotions of those around him when focused, the real value in his particular ability is that it is more like an aura. Projection comes far more easily than reception. There is baseline neutrality to his empathy, but he can easily change how others perceive him. When necessary he can make himself inherently intimidating and menacing, not by any physical feature, but just the fear-inducing aura that radiates off him. On the flipside, he can project a warm familiarity, like the feeling you get when around an old friend. It is useful for making people want to trust him and speak to him. Both methods can be used to pry information from suspects.
Eidetic Memory: This has nothing to do with psionics, but Bransen is in possession of an eidetic, or photographic if you prefer, memory. It gives a whole new meaning to that phrase ‘can never be unseen’. He remembers everything. That moment when he was six and Bill Rogers called him a freak, they were at the indoor playground in lower subsection B, block 71, Bill was wearing a Harpy shirt, khakis, and red sneakers, the paint was peeling a bit on the wall behind him, which was covered in graffiti. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, of even the most mundane memories being stored away forever. Some call it a gift, but personally he thinks it is a curse at times. It does make learning, data collection, and analysis really easy, though.
RELATIONSHIPS
Amelia Landon: The woman who gave birth to him. She squeaked by on the bare minimum to keep him alive so she could collect the benefits of the government stipend for him. Even at fifty years old the woman remains a druggie whore with little to no interest in her child - until she wants money, then she loves to remind him that he owes her for existing. Bransen has never given her a penny since being drafted into the ATC.
Tomas Malott: The first and greatest love of Bran’s life. There was nothing he would not have done for the other Pilot. He had planned to marry him and be with him forever. Fate is a cruel bitch and Tomas died in Bran’s arms during a heated gunfire exchange with enemy combatants. Bran is still haunted by the memories of his dead love.
BACKSTORY
Born to the lower caste and raised by his single mother in the lower levels, Bransen didn’t start life exactly going places. His mother was more interested in drinking, drugs, and boyfriends than him. Who his father is remains a mystery, and he stopped caring a very long time ago. Left mostly to his own devices when not in the shoddy public education system, he spent his spare time at the indoor slum playgrounds or simply exploring the lower levels.
Bransen didn’t have many friends, the other children thought he was weird, and he wasn’t exactly a social butterfly to begin with. As a ten year old boy he already knew that he wanted to go into the military. Not that he could get a recruiter to so much as look at him until he was sixteen, but he at least set goals early. Joining the military was the only way for a boy like him to ever hope to climb the life ladder into something better than lower level trash. A lifetime of service in the public sector was completely unacceptable to him. He was far too clever and ambitious to suffer such a droll fate.
Fate happened to have an even bigger plan ahead for him. By the time he was twelve it was pretty obvious that Bransen was displaying significant psionic ability in the areas of telepathy and empathy. It was like the universe had dumped a huge gift right in his lap. He got to go right off to the ATC as soon as he turned thirteen.
Candidacy was not a cakewalk. Bransen had always been a bigger boy, and he threw himself into the physical training with gusto. Yes, his body ached most days as he pushed himself through the drills day after day, but he liked how it turned his gangly teen body solid and with time it got easier and easier.
The second stage was probably the easiest. Yes he had come from a poor background with minimal education, but Bransen devoured the ATC textbooks. He aced exams because he literally memorized the books and course material. Honestly it was impossible for him to forget. Other aptitude tests showed he had good problem solving and critical thinking skills.
The team-building and teamwork stage was a little harder, Bransen was a quiet young man by nature, and had trouble controlling his empathy at first. It made the other Candidates nervous around him whenever his mood was dark or angry. With a lot of extra work with his mentor and another, younger empathetic Candidate named Tomas he was able to move on to the next stage after months of lagging behind with delays in his ability to make friends. Of course he and Tomas became almost inseparable after this extra training together, the two becoming best friends.
This was also the time he earned himself the nickname Muffin, because of the way he learned to mask his emotions and his naturally quiet nature, the other Candidates decided that Bransen had become as bland as a Bran Muffin, and it stuck annoyingly hard.
Luckily all that extra work made stage four a bit of a breeze. He didn’t spend very long there before advancing out of the ATC and into the Citadel for the final stage. That only lasted until he was old enough to be eligible to bond with a dragon. Bransen was quickly assigned as a combat operative and was deployed to join the war.
Tomas was right behind him and they served together in the same unit. They had barely been fully fledged Pilots when Tomas had a nasty break-up with his boyfriend of the time. Bransen was all too eager to comfort his friend. The two had been close through years at the ATC, but they had always been sleeping with other people, neither ever romantically available at the same time as the other. For the first time there was nothing between them and they dove headfirst and hard into a hot and heavy relationship.
War and battle are ugly, bloody things. Bransen can’t forget any of it. He suffered multiple injuries. Tomas was with him through it all. Even a few years younger than Bran, Tomas was the rock in their love affair and Bran was smitten as could be. He had planned to ask the boy to marry him as soon as the war was over.
Tomas was killed in action six weeks before the ceasefire.
After the war he remained as a solo CO, going on frequent missions into the wastes to eliminate troublesome raiders and mutant beasts.
On a particularly high-risk mission he took two bullets to the torso and after recovering to the point of being cleared to return to duty Bransen put in a transfer request to Inquiry, which was promptly granted and he was assigned to Ryun.
