| Valentine |
|---|
| "Hmm... being with you all is not so bad." |
| Origin |
|---|
| The Ring of Fire, Art Trade |
| Name: | Valentine |
|---|---|
| Age: | Adult |
| Sex: | Male |
| Species: | Genetic Experiment |
| Height: | 7'0" |
| Color: | Gray |
| Residence: | The Abstract Destiny |
| Occupation: | Dr. Schroeder's Bodyguard |
| Abilities: |
|
| Personality: | Valentine is a quiet creature and Doctor Schroeder's living shadow. Reserved, but not shy, he generally speaks only when spoken to and accompanies Schroeder anywhere the man goes when he may be in need of someone to watch his back. Despite multiple assurances that there is nothing to be repaid, Valentine claims a life-debt that he says will only be fulfilled on the day he dies in Schroeder's service. He is not unfriendly to the other men, creatures, and dragons on Schroeder's payroll, but only Schroeder gets Valentine's sworn loyalty. |
| Biography: | Not all geneticists are as altruistic as Doctor Schroeder is, and Valentine is the abandoned experiment of one such doctor. His origin, in fact, is that ship which declared itself the Twisted Fate and struck up a sort of one-sided rivalry with the Destiny. Made by the hands of the Fate's lab-witches many years back, he was abandoned as a failure and left with an unstable mix of genetics that would have eventually killed him as his different 'parts' rejected each other in a kind of nuclear explosion of allergic reactions.
It was in fact the first meeting of the two ships, while the Destiny and the future Fate were both resupplying at a station several light-years from classic Nexus space. Schroeder sensed and recovered the suffering creature, undertaking a vicious battle to save his life. It took several days in which neither Schroeder nor his best workers saw much sleep, as techniques both magical and technological were turned to saving a genetic creation that had already been born -- a task quite outside their usual line of work. Of course, Schroeder and his team did end up succeeding. The nameless experiment remained in a healing coma for several days afterwards, and when he awoke was both confused and extremely wary of his surroundings. He knew where he had come from and remembered the callousness he had been treated with and the pain he had suffered, and given that he was essentially still a newborn, had no reason to think that Schroeder was anything more than a repeat of the creator that had abandoned him. What followed was a time where the nameless creature had to be confined, as fear, confusion, and hatred revealed an aspect of him that no amount of genetic therapy could rebalance: the presence of a shapeshifting ability that twisted him into a hulking, berserk, extremely dangerous version of himself. But in time, counseled by Schroeder as well as the doctor's closest assistants and friends -- Devika and Sahurru -- the creature was able to relax and accept that the doctor's actions had been an act of kindhearted charity and nothing more. He asked Schroeder to name him and swore a life-debt to the man. As he grew stronger, the now-named Valentine was trained by the security teams, revealing a natural talent for firearms and hand-to-hand combat. Once they declared that there was nothing more they could teach him, he returned to Schroeder's side and assigned himself the role of the doctor's personal bodyguard, despite assurances that the man needed no such constant protection. Since Valentine would not be turned away, Schroeder let him take up the job. In the years that passed, Valentine grew into the devoted loyalty achieved not in servitude, but in deep friendship, and is even stauncher in his determination to serve Schroeder to the death than ever before. |