Name: Dr. Gaius Chernev
Age: 39
Sex: Male
Species: Human
Ship Survivor or Colonist?: Colonist
Bios:
When a race is preoccupied with its physical survival and its members are obsessed with chasing technological advancement and catching up in a perceived arms race, there are inevitably blank spots in their cultural and historical understanding of the universe. And just as with anything in the TF, this would be dealt with in a straightforward and goal-orientated manner. In this case, by an unlikely person, whose name happens to be Gaius Chernev.
Despite being a graduate of the TRAIDA (Terran Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Development Academy), his passion had always been history - ever since he was a child. There wasn't any chance for him to hone his passion, though, since the history taught at school was an abridged version and he soon found out that the extended version wasn't overly extended either. After the mandatory military training, which was a terrible experience for him due to putting too much emphasis on the physical qualities he so much lacked, ended his father - Boris Chernev - a well-known professor of Applied mathematics, who worked on a variety of governmental projects aiming at producing new technologies - was adamant
"The Terran Federation doesn't need story tellers, son." he had said
"You have a great intellectual potential and should apply it where it will bring most benefits to our civilization." At the frail age of 21, Gaius could hardly put up an argument against that and thus enrolled into the academy, studying Applied quantum and molecular physics - a study which he finished with flying colours even if it didn't spark his fancy all too much.
While at TRAIDA, the young man also managed to grow as a person and put forward his goals, which had nothing, or at least very little, to do with the world of physics. Thus, much to the displeasure of his father, he used his graduation fund (an amount of money, scaling with the diploma grades, that the government gave to all who graduated from higher education so as to kickstart their careers) in order to travel around the colonies and study and research data from both digitalised libraries, public records and the people themselves. After a detailed study of the Public records and personal accounts of archaeologists and historians from all the colonies, Gaius was left with an excellent knowledge and understanding of the ancient and medieval worlds of old Terra, at the cost of having expended all his available funds.
His father believed that the youth's flight of fancy was over and how that he had satisfied his boyish curiosity, he would proceed to finding a proper employment within a respectable research institution – something not very hard considering his qualifications and persuasiveness. Borish Chernev was anxious for his son to give his contribution to humanity's pool of knowledge, but little did he know, that the contribution he so desired wouldn't come from the path he had foreseen. When his son came back home with the nerve to ask his father to finance a "small field trip back home", the older man's jaw almost dropped and he instantly refused. In the course of the next few days, however, he would come to realise that his son had grown immensely, turning from just a very bright boy into a clever and determined man, whose negotiation skills actually matched his. After a heated discussion, Gaius managed to lay out enough arguments and present enough blind spots in humanity's knowledge to show off the necessity of what he wanted to do. What's more, he was also successful in proving the value of such information to his reserved father, ultimately acquiring the funds he needed, provided he would return a percentage of any profit he made back as repayment.
The next months passed with young and anxious scientist procuring a ship, a crew and fellow researchers to partake in what most considered a mission of too high a risk and too small a reward. While finding mercenaries with a suitable ship, who were willing to break into an INEF no-fly zone wasn't as hard as he thought it would be, procuring a team of researchers willing to do the same took a lot of time and persuasion. After all, men of science, especially ones who merited high potential, weren't all that accepting to breaking the laws of the Terran Federation, even if it was for the sake of acquiring greater understanding. Nevertheless, Gaius couldn't accomplish his work all alone and eventually managed to form an adventurous team around himself.
So, regardless of all hurdles, about a year after his conversation with Boris, Gaius was walking amongst the ruins of the overgrown Ziggurates of Sumeria and Accad, stretching his hand to finally touch the Shedu he had so eagerly dreamed of. Gaius and his team spent a only around a week altogether, skulking around the temples and monuments of the dead world, their progress greatly slowed by their small numbers and the fact they had to take long breaks before each of the three runs on the planet, in order to both plan out the next one and also recover from the hostile effects of the terraformed atmosphere. Then there was the issue of not being able to stay in orbit for long, so as not to be detected which further complicated the mission and ate additional time. The latter caused them to take several months of linear time altogether and it was almost a year before they made their way back to New Earth. Even if Boris was a hard man, he had been quite worried about the fate of his only son and he didn't feel embarrassed to cry as he watched in real time his son made a press statement later that day, stating that he had
"Finally completed a chapter in man kind's history through phenomenal findings."
A few months later, Gaius' book digital book "Where did we come from? A complete description of the Ancient world from the Stone through the Bronze Ages", which gave a detailed account of his and his team's research in an extremely well-written manner, making it something between a tale of adventure and a real block load of scientific data became an absolute bestseller amongst the general public and the scientific community alike throughout all colonies. The book had several distinct advantages – it was one of the very few times a human had come back to see Earth after the terraformation and it was certainly the most detailed and engaging narrative. Second, it's style and the accessibility of the language made the type of knowledge that was usually only available in scientific script and scholarly issues available and, moreover, interesting to the public, accounting for the general obsession with the work, despite it having contributed little actual new information. Additionally, having featured 3d holograms of the majority of the important landmarks and placeholders of the ancient world, both in the exact state they'd found them and in a computer-clarified version which sought to recreate them at the moment of their utmost beauty were both extremely entertaining to the general populace and quite useful to the scientific community. Finally, Gaius did have some original findings, which didn't feature in the Public Records thus far and helped fill in some gaps of understanding. Though in no way ground-breaking, his huge digital information book was surely helpful and it served to make him a very well-known public person, him featuring in numerous TV shows and discussion forums, even making the cover of magazines. Thus it came as little surprise, when the offer of awarding him an honorary doctorate in Archaeology was raised at one of the top universities of humanities. The offer was met with a chilly, yet stern denial from the scientific community, which saw the, then young, Chernev as more of an adventurous explorer, who sought popularity and money, rather than actual scientific knowledge. Some well-versed archaeologists expressed discontent with him being shown on public TV and asked for his opinions as a scientists on contemporary matters, rather than an actual scientists with more contribution to their respective fields.
A normal person would have left the things at that, especially since he had become quite the wealthy man. But not Gaius. He took the scientific community's criticism to heart and that made him even more determined to show off he was actually after real truth and knowledge. Though what was there for him to explore anymore? Earth being done with, Gaius Chernev looked at the stars and, after a short research, came to understand that the knowledge the Terran Federation had about its neighbours, even its closer trade partners' was limited, to say the least. For a person who was discontent with the miniature gaps in the knowledge of ancient history in order to risk a trip back to a terraformed world in order to fill them, leaving things at such a state was, to put it mildly, simply unacceptable.
His popularity still in its peak, he settled onto a more challenging, although not immediately fruitful journey – the archaeology of the known races of the cosmos, claiming in front of the press, that he "Had unravelled the past of humanity, now it is time to unravel the past of the universe!" Once again, the scientific community was rather sceptical, even in the face of general public excitement. They were certainly thrilled about expanding the knowledge of other civilisations, it was already established that, even for well-versed specialists, that field was quite tricky. Obtaining accurate historical information was rather difficult, because of the sheer amount of data, not to mention the difficulties in translation, familiarisation with the race's specific ways of recording deeds and evens. The huge differences in style, even in the presence of a translation, were often too hard to discern through, leading to confusion and inconsistencies. And if well-educated archaeologists failed, what chance would one who wasn't even formally educated have?
At first, Gaius had to reluctantly admit that people were right – getting through huge volumes of information written in a manner, for all intents and purposes, alien to you was not something to accomplish lightly. It took him years and years to begin understanding the styles and symbolism of a few nearby empires and stat browsing through originally translated research (not the ones made digestible by the Terran scientists before him, but the raw translations of local historical scripts that locals had been paid off to translate in English). Whenever he came upon a chunk of data he couldn't make any sense of, he would dedicate himself to finding someone that would do it for him, or rather – with him. A few years of such efforts had allowed him to establish connections with like-minded individuals from the few species of his research, who would be willing to help him and also wanted to "trade" in histories. He had to go through metric tons of bureaucracy in different worlds, change his living arrangements innumerable times, often finding himself sleeping in a thermal blanked in the undecipherable ruins of an alien home world, waiting for his contact or guide to come and help him.
Nevertheless, in about fourteen years since expressing his original opinion, Gaius Chernev's second book "A tribute to the kings who once reigned in the skies: an in-depth research into the ancient and modern histories of four worlds". The sheer data in this digital book, containing 3D holograms rendered via the latest software was so overwhelming, that it was enough for at least three works. True to his style, though, Gaius described both the spiciest parts of his adventures as well as the scientific data he had uncovered, which again stripped him from having achieved complete credibility in the scientific community's view, but also helped his work spike even bigger interest than the last one, amongst the Terran general populace, across colonies. Despite the narrative style, though, this work had everything needed to make it look scientific and the sheer amount of information it contributed was so much that minor inconsistencies or overlapping could easily be forgiven. Gaius was once again in the eye of public interest and, partially under public pressure, once again set up to receive an honorary doctorate in archaeology. This time, the community and the awarding community was divided, over 70% being in his favour. The process wasn't very long, as both viewpoints had clear and concise arguments, however after accounting for the nature, difficulty and volume of his work, the committee agreed to name him Dr. Gaius Chernev.
Again, that would have likely been the end of it, had it been anyone else but Gaius – having achieved this goal of his, he quickly set forth to use his connections and status in order to further his studies in other species as well. As those continued, Dr. Chernev, who had never published a paper before, actually did so, claiming that
all his research to date, both that of humans and other species, had lead him to come up with a hypothesis, which even if not conclusive and needing much more evidence in order to come any close to being proven, was so exciting and full of potential, that he felt unable to keep it to himself and was compelled to share it with the world. The paper's thesis read as follows:
"Due to the overlapping of a variety of details of symbolic and metaphorical natures, in the occult doctrines that shaped the thinking of our ancestors and those found throughout the histories of the alien conglomerate worlds, as described throughout my published and unpublished research insofar, combined with our knowledge of unique resemblance between all telepathy in the known universe, there are reasons to suspect some common agent, beyond mere coincidence. That common agent could very well stem from each of several factors, as systemised across in this paper, or any multitude of those. Nevertheless, through means of induction and lifelong first-person acquaintance with the matters in question, it is my hypothesis, that the common agent was a race, a being or an entity of some kind, which, at some points in all the aforementioned histories came in contact with either a minority or a majority of each race. This viewpoint of mine, though bolstering as few real empirical evidence as any, perhaps even less, is hard to disprove on account of Panspermia, as one of the races discussed in my previous research, off which I based my study, is widely known amongst the scientific community to not share any ancient genetic material with neither humanity nor any of the other thee. In the current state of knowledge, therefore, such a theory out to be taken under consideration, until sound empirical evidence pointing otherwise."
His theory indeed cause a huge public interest, sparking both conspiracy theories, discontent amongst such who held on to some belief systems and largely a feeling of doubt within the scientific community, who did share parts of his initial premise, though not the argument he build-up, the vast majority advocating for the large number of possible natural causes that Gaius himself had listed. Whichever the case, once that statement begun circulating, it caused genuine interest, which made Gaius to often take breaks from his studies in order to come back to TF space, and have discussions as well as exchange opinions with other scientists on not only his theory, but also variety of other matters. For some time, he would be receiving groups or individuals at his spacious apartment on Gallileo, a farming colony, where he bought the estate in a suburban, relaxing neighbourhood.
It was on one such occasion where he had two other scientists at his home because they asked for his opinion on an artefact of some sort – a tablet that seemed to be inscribed in the language of one of the civilisations that he had studied. The men presumed it to be a historical document, possibly a poem or a written record. Peculiarly enough, none of them mentioned where they acquired the object from, however after many days of trying to discern any sort of meaningful content from the inscription on the stonelike material, their efforts were absolutely in vain. This had Gaius employ the help of an archaeology loremaster from that particular race. The alien visited him and agreed that the content doesn't make any sense, as it looks more like randomly put words without clear meaning. There weren't any sort of patterns either, which would suggest cryptic writing of any sort.
The alien did make the remark, though, that there was a popular trend in the recent years amongst his kind of lovers writing sending their sweethearts messages which were encrypted so that they made absolutely no sense to the naked eye and held no pattern altogether, though they were read and composed in such a way to only be understood through a cypher derived from either their name or something that was dear and well-known for both parties. Your other half being able to decipher your message was concerned the hallmark of intimate devotion. Whilst the alien didn't consider it appropriate to try to do so, since the tablet was clearly quite ancient whilst the trend was all too contemporary. Nevertheless, Gaius did decide to try it out, however due to the number of different words that could be used to form a text, he decided to make a program that would run the text using key words from all the other documents he knew from the particular time period of the tablet, plus some contemporary slang from the alien language. As he was scanning the code of the stone, though, he soon came to realise the material is highly magnetic – unlike anything he had worked with before when it came to archaeological fragments. That was especially weird, since the race's home world hosted a particular scarcity of natural magnetism. To a great surprise of his alien friend, one of Dr. Chernev's suggestions did indeed prove to transform the meaningless text into fort of a message, which when translated into normal Terran English would have read something along the lines of
"There is an inherent problem with the Paradigm. Answer is in the vibratory fluctuations." The only "answer" that Gaius had for the utter confusion of his companion, though, was a simply "I don't know".
While the former had assumed the message to be a 1 in a million mismatch of words and gave it no further meaning, Gaius wasn't about to give up so easily. Thinking of the message day and night for weeks straight had him write numerous simulations and revisit all of his work connected to the particular alien world, in hopes of finding any connection to meaning of the message, which he was slowly beginning to think wasn't ancient at all, despite what the carbon dating would suggest. Time kept At one point he had a though that had him consider all the time he spent prior to it idiotic – the tablet material was highly magnetic – since the first message was so obscure to find, why wouldn't the second part be something quite literal – the object was a permanent magnet, the fluctuations of which seemed to always fall into a particular pattern, which when translated into a computer simulation produced a particular frequency. Since it was below 12 Hz, there was no way for him to physically perceive it and as it didn't seem to affect him mentally in any way, the only logical thing to do was to represent it mathematically by translating it in numbers.
What followed was a pointless sequence of sleepless nights trying to make sense of those numbers while locked in a furious battle with himself, because there was a part of him asking if he wasn't making all those clues up for no reason at all. When sharing those concerns with a friend, the latter said the numbers looked like an IP address and since he happened to be a skilled computer specialist, Dr. Chernev asked of him to trace the address. The guy did as requested, despite some protests towards his friend's sanity and peace of mind. While tracing the location proved beyond his friend's possibilities, he did find a website created and hosted from the same address. The website was nothing fancy – just a black background with a white imprinted text on it. There was also a place for apparently posting a comments to the page, though it didn't seem to work when his friend tried to do so. Gaius found the text familiar and, after a few minutes of reasoning, quickly realised it was actually an extract form an ancient poem he had come across on one of his journeys. With trembling fingers did he use his personal laptop to access his information database and quickly locate the verse. When typing the last lines of text that were, surely deliberately, omitted from the poem he had almost held is breath – it was all real! None of the clues were fragments of his imagination, he had actually traced something very much real!
"Once upon a night we'll take to the carnival of life
The beauty of this ride ahead – such an incredible high!
It's harder to light a candle, easy to curse the dark instead."
The website paused, as he hit enter, only to change into another pile of text. The titles was in a language or code he did not understand and there was a picture of a strange insignia underneath. The website went on to describe some sort of an organisation, to which the blatantly alien insignia belonged, its name reading as The Ashen Verdict – surely a clumsy translation in his opinion.
The Ashen Verdict was a non-hierarchical, unorthodox group of scientists, or, as they called themselves – truth seekers, from many different races, working together to, to put it generally, unveil deeply enrooted secrets of the universe, particularly things connected with the initial origin and spread of life. Their story started, when a certain group of individuals managed to find evidence of an inherent structure that was once present in the cosmic microwave background radiation and could hence be traced back into a sort of a message.
Usually only much older or more advanced races would make up the members Verdict, though occasionally, extremely bright individuals who were so transcendent of their societies that they would ask themselves the initial questions that got the Verdict started long ago, would also make the cut, albeit very, very rarely. In other words, the organisation needed members who had grown enough in consciousness to ask themselves the big questions and be ready to receive answers, as painstaking as those revelations could be. Needless to say, no one subscribing to the traditional belief systems, would be allowed in, as the answers the Verdict sought and had already found shattered every bit of those, from where their motto - "There is no religion, higher than the Truth" stemmed.
Throughout the course of its long operation, the Verdict had, albeit involuntarily, stumbled across technologies that were above the baseline, even for advanced races (which the humanity was not) and adopted them, combined with what their races had and knew, to further their agenda. There was a strict policy of non-involvement and non-discernment of such technologies amongst anyone but members, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. That policy wasn't even mentioned when members of older, advanced species involved, but strictly enforced, when dealing with members of younger, less-advanced races. Even more so, if the latter had recently been even close to a war in the near decades.
Needless to say, Gaius was the first human to even learn about the organisation's existence. Their secrecy was obvious, since his friend couldn't see that part of the website even upon inputting the correct line of text and when Gaius himself tried to check it again after some days had passed, the second page didn't load for him either. For some time nothing really happened, which caused him to believe he had all but imagined the whole thing due to his stubbornness in making sense of all the clue.
Up until a few weeks prior to the attack on Gallileo, while he was casually strolling through one of the many parks in the colony. There were hardly any people around, so when a pair of two smartly dressed gentlemen walked up next to him, he was mildly surprised. Nevertheless, by that time, Dr. Chrnev was quite used to people asking him for an autograph and recognising him on the street, so it didn't make him too suspicious. Both men had absolutely perfect facial features that could only be achieved with excessive plastic surgery that was quite uncommon for these parts and there was something slightly unnerving about them, though he couldn't determine what exactly. Both had chosen to wear caps, covering their ears and even though their glasses weren't exactly sunglasses, the images of their eyes was somehow difficult to make out in its exactness. One of the pair began to speak, his voice somehow being quiet and extremely articulate in the same time. He asked Gaius for something connected with his latest theories and when the startled scientist gave a half-assed explanation, the man continued to correct him with his own arguments. Before Gaius could say something, the creature opposed to him smiled and explained "As you can no doubt tell, we've had our eyes on you for quite some time, Gaius. Recently you followed a sequence of clues that led you to a certain piece of information about a certain organisation. Those clue were distinctly made to judge you on a number of criteria, not the last of which was decisiveness and willpower. We introduced ourselves to you, because we are in need of your intelligence and unique talents. You see, there are many who ask questions, but a very small minority of minds in this galaxy have matured enough to actually take a step towards finding answers and actually being ready to face and live with those answers. The Ashen Verdict seeks this kind of people. People like you. It is our judgement, that your zeal and intelligence are too rare a combination in order to be lost with mundane matter such as studying other races."
Gaius, unsurprisingly, took an emotional disliking to someone calling his researches mundane: "I don't know if you are who you claim to be, however I am sure the organisation I've read about would be able to see that learning about other races is by no means a mundane matter. In fact, understanding others, the other races, past and present will help humanity become more wholesome in itself."
"Perhaps I misspoke." The man had replied, unphased "It is a mundane matter, for no other reason but the fact it's an information already painfully well-known." Seeing as the man was about to say something, the man quickly added "Well-known to us. And we would share it with you, though you will only share pieces of it with the rest of your race, so they don't see you ceasing your current pursuits and start asking questions. Do you understand what I mean?"
"You want me to join you… to join the Ashen Verdict? To try to find traces of the message? And for what – to let you play God?" Gaius was still emotionally affected by the statements before, although the realisation of what it would mean to actually find this answer, the power it would give, had started creeping in. Sure, he wanted answer, no doubt, but could he trust those shady people enough to also let them have a peek at the ultimate Truth?
"To gain greater understanding! Come on, Dr. Chernev, we are talking about a puzzle, a mystery, encoded in the very foundation of reality and scattered across the length and breadth of the entire universe. Is it really something you could pass out on?" despite what the man's words would suggest, his voice betrayed no traces of emotion whatsoever
"Okay, it would appear as if you've looked into me all too well. I can't really say no without hating myself later on. So… I join you, then what happens?"
"Not so fast." The man who had done the talking raised his hand as if telling him to stop "You read our ways and you know how we operate towards younger races, especially one as… persistently stubborn as yours. With the relatively recent military intersection that you've had, you are quite the double negative. For this reason we have devised a test. It's not what we normally do, although it's not a total precedent in our history either. My colleague here will hand you an artefact, called the Ashen Beacon. This artefact will present you with a very important piece of knowledge. If you unlock it… well, then you will know how to be one of us in a sense."
"In a sense?" he had asked, puzzled
But there was no one to answer him, as the man who had thus far done the talking had disappeared immediately after that, making Gaius wonder if he wasn't a hologram or an artificially induced hallucination of some kind. The other man was still standing there, however, and he handed Gaius over a small object, ellipsoid object, about the size of a girl's fist, made of peculiar metal with numerous miniature engravings on it. He didn't answer any of the scientist's bewildered questions, in fact, he didn't say anything at all. Instead he merely waved good-bye and walked away, across the park lane, as casually as every next man.
Gaius, as could be expected, spend the next days in attempts of figuring out the object, but so far only came close enough to understand that the inscriptions were in fact formulae and that the object itself was a machine of some sort.
But before he could uncover anything further, the invasion happened. What a drag!
Trait 1: Seeker of the lost lore Highly experienced researcher, scientist and negotiator, spend the majority of his life solving and looking into things that were previously considered unsolvable +1 Intelligence
Trait 2: Free thinker[rank 2 trait] Experienced at overcoming adversity, distrust, disbelief and negativity, able to persuade people (both in terms of humans and aliens) and think critically, both of which on the fly, as has been required for him in his numerous public discussions or sticky situations on alien worlds +2 Courage
Trait 3: The Space Archeologist A renown public figure, albeit considered eccentric or downright weird by many, he is still one of the most highly respected minds of his time, making people much more willing and likely to listen to him as well as slightly more likely to get preferential treatment by virtue of his perceived genius. He is also likely to be recognised by most of the human characters or NPCs, if not by face, then at least by name.
Trait 4: Veni, vidi, intelligi - from running complex simulations using a supercomputer, to persuading alien officials to allow him passage into their sacred sites and trying to make sense of the latter on his own, because of having been denied a translator, to memorizing intricate details of ancient stories for days on end, so that he could write them down in the exact manner later on, to finally coping with and integrating the frighteningly insightful revelations of the Ashen Verdict's database - Gaius Chernev has been there and has done it all. He has had to become incredibly well-versed in radically different fields of knowledge in order to try and unify them in the end, that his frame of thought and scope of mind are quite possibly the most transcendent of all of human kind to date (this is not to say other humans or AI are not better in specific fields or aspects than him, but his strength comes from intertwining them together). This trait has multiple aspects - his way of thinking would usually transcend the ways and patterns of thinking, that other humans would consider normal, which could result in friction and discontent, or - on the contrary - may seem amazingly insightful. +1 Intelligence
Stats:
- Strength: 3
- Agility: 3
- Marksmanship: 3
- Intelligence: 9 (+1 from Seeker of the lost lore, +1 from Veni, vidi, intelligi) = 11
- Courage: 7 (+2 from Free thinker) = 9
- Survival: 4
Equipment List:
Seal of the Ashen Verdict - a small, ellipsoid object that is running on free energy and is adjusted to protect its owner from all harm by means of shielding his physical and astral body against any potential hostile impact (meaning the protective bubble cover about inches around his body, but no more than that). It is also capable of stopping telepathic and sonic attacks. Extremely advanced technology, the limits of which are unknown to him. Gaius is not aware of the object's shielding capabilities yet nor about the way it works. About three strong shots or physical or psychic blows are enough to ovepower and piece through the shield, however the latter is capable of regenerating over periods of time, depending on how much of its power was drained.
The object's primary purpose is to reveal a very particular sensitive information to its holder, after the latter has been able to identify and solve its mystery. So far, though, Gaius is unaware of how exactly to do that.
A standard government issue handgun.
The clothes he is wearing, as shown on the picture.
His personal, customised laptop, put in a water-proof backpack.
Signature: Will if I must.... Aleksandar
Extra: If it would please the court: a theme song for my character
P.S.: If my character is approved, I'd like to get matched in a group with Laura and Tharvax for the intro, since I think these to be some of the more interesting characters so far.
Also, I think it may be interesting for Dr. Gaius Chernev and Admiral Ariston Tychon to be matched in two separate groups and sort of leading them, so that the two leadership styles could collide when everyone is united in the end - like in every classical sci-fi. That's provided everyone agrees, of course.
