Post by Latus on Dec 27, 2010 23:43:55 GMT -5
"See a Need, Fill a Need"
-- Andrea L. Dinkelman
Password: Ronto
Character permission: Tal
Name: Roland Fercurian Ricketts
Race: Human
Age: 56
Height: 5' 10''
Weight: 163 lbs
Birth place: Upper Coruscant
Appearance:
A business suit and tie are very common with Roland. Everything is well pressed and hints at a very set routine. However, in most cases it is because Roland likes to be prepared. In business he always wants to have the upper hand on deals, on impressions. In this way he is slightly different for a man his age. As his age is starting to catch up with him Roland carries a custom-designed cane made of Kriin-wood and topped with an ornate metal grip.
Roland's Cane (Clicky)
The particular pipe he uses most of the time is an unasuming one. The bowl is made of magnesium silicate which gives it the characteristic color and texture of a meerschaum pipe.
Roland's Meerschaum Pipe (Clicky)
His hair is silver with white and brown highlights. The hair itself stretches down to his shoulders and has a slight curl. For a man his age he has very thick hair. A thick mustache and goatee adorns his chin and a pair of thick rim, circular lense glasses cover his salt-and pepper brows. All in all with the aging face, the long flowing hair and the soft hazel green eyes, Roland taken out of context could come off as a kindly older man.
In stature Roland appears neither massive nor imposing having never aspired to be an adventurer nor military man. His form is fitting for his position, a wiry, well-fed, and thinly muscled man who would be more likely to lift a pen than a sword. He holds himself with a straight back and a confident stride. He has kept himself trim and healthy, owing it all to a proper diet and limited cardio-regimen in his limited free time.
Roland
Roland w/o Glasses/Trimmed Hair
Personality:
Roland is a successful man. There is no doubt about that, but if he has learned anything from success it is that much of it comes from the bent backs and sweaty brows of his employees. As both the CEO and head designer he strives to maintain a working, if slightly distanced relationship with most if not all of his employees. To them he is the big man, the boss but also the first man you go to if a concept needs approving or even improving. As Roland built his primary design team he stressed individual projects but also team cooperation and co-designing. This has allowed more fully developed ideas from the designers and has helped Roland become well known and well liked.
One on one he will offer you a drink, offer you a seat before talking business. He is a courteous listener, a man with a kind smile, and always open to criticism or suggestion. He acts as though he is not the CEO but a worker in one of the few NMT production facilities as he understands the plights of the working class better than most in his position. It is not greed that drives him, only a genuine desire to protect people through new armaments and technology for the Republic.
Occupation: Founder of Northern Monument Technologies
Rank: CEO and Head Designer
Location: Industrial Sector, Coruscant
Bio:
Birth of a Businessman
Roland was born of Lillian and Ferris Ricketts in the middle-upper class sector of Coruscant. His parents lived well through degrees from a technical college (father) and a bachelors degree from a university (mother). Already having a daughter the pair had prepared for the birth of their second child and preemptively saved credits to allow the mother to remain at home to raise their second child. The father, a Master Electrician, provided a supplemental income to the family.
Roland was a smart and inquisitive youth, wanting to spend time with his father whenever he had the chance. More than once Ferris found young Roland awake at night wanting to watch what his father did. Thus his father took him into his small workshop and tinkered with a few things, taking apart critical components and small jobs until the child fell asleep.
All in all, life was good. They never went hungry and always could afford little things of luxury here and there to make their lives even more comfortable. When Roland was 3 the parents conceived again, however the child was a stillbirth leaving the parents decimated over the loss. However, as the months passed the parents began to ease their emotions toward their loss and focused on their remaining children. They did not try to conceive again.
Roland's sister, Dismeana, was three years older than he and epitomized the sibling rivalry between the two in the early years. The parents didn't pick favorites though that didn't keep Dis from doing what she thought got her attention. Roland, too young to really do much against her just chalked it up to play; he was laughing constantly. Eventually, as the pair reached grade-school, the rivalry petered off. Dis was something of a tomboy and found herself protecting little Roland from bullies.
"You are too nice, Roland." She would say. It was true that Roland never was bothered by the way people acted, believing that everyone was fundamentally nice at heart. Thus, as a child he proceeded to "Kill it with kind." It didn't take long before Dis and Roland came to love each other as siblings should.
Emergence of Great Intelligence
True enough Roland applied himself early. Homework provided little challenge and he found himself getting perfect scores on every assignment; all with little conscious effort on his part. Every subject seemed to come naturally to him. At home, he would play with toys both bought and built for him by his father. He would play at the door of the workshop and, every now and again, his father would bring him out something simple, something fun; a figure with a buzzer, a small wheeled speeder. Rarely more complex than that, but Roland found them amazing. Soon Roland found that he enjoyed taking these things apart. His father told him not to do so but, in private, Roland would. It became a game, taking something apart and then putting it back together so daddy wouldn't notice.
This continued later into childhood. At 10 Roland dismantled the droid that his parents kept as a house-keeper. When his father found out that he had disassembled it but reassembled it into working order he scoffed and ruffled his son's hair; "Don't do that again or I will get mad." His parents were surprised at his clever actions and decisive actions of completely rebuilding a droid like that but thought little more of it. Roland kept his word and did not disassemble the droid again. This lasted for two years but Roland got bored again soon.
At 12 Roland stole into his father's workshop in the middle of the night and completely rewired a data-pad his father had been working on. Again his father was upset by his actions but his anger was dulled by the quality of work on a project. The second time Roland's punishment was harsher, grounded for a week. The client was immensely pleased with the job and paid his father well. However, what his father didn't tell the man was that the work was that of his son.
Roland's merit was finalized at 13 when he got bored one evening and disassembled the same droid after it had been dead for several weeks; "What harm is it if its already broke?" When he was finished the droid worked again like new, again much to his parent's surprise. This time his father wasn't angry but pleased and told Roland; "If you put that much dedication into your schoolwork, I'll let you spend more time with me in the shop." Roland was all too happy to oblige. When he began spending more and more time in his studies on subjects not normally taught in the school Roland attended his parents made up their mind; their son was special and he should be awarded for being so. Roland, only wishing to work more in his father's shop, thought nothing of it until he was taken to a center for a certain test.
Thus, as Dis entered Primary schooling (with a very high GPA), Roland was tested for the potential of genius. While Roland did perform admirably on the test he didn't quite reach the level of genius but was certainly a great deal more intelligent than the average, scoring in the top 15% of test takers. Only the top 10% were considered genius at his age. Roland's lowest section on the test was in basic grammar. The grammar grade was chalked up to test anxiety as, though Roland was confident in his own abilities, his parents had conveyed the importance and what this test meant. The young man was indeed anxious but he was still young, not being able to qualify what he really felt. He never revealed to his parents that he did, in fact, struggle some with grammar in primary though grades were the result of a large quantity of dedicated time.
Rather than re-enrolling Roland to a standard school in his 14th year they chose a different school, one in a higher region of Coruscant and there he stayed.From that point ever onward Roland attended magnet programs, took more advanced courses, and graduating top of his class from his primary school at the age of 17. His parents ever stressed college so, knowing that he could really go places if he continued onto higher learning, he enrolled in Coruscant University. His first classes began just before his 18th birthday. Though Dis also finished with honors, in her class' top ten, she was happy for Roland in his swift shot upward although harbored a resentment that she never expressed openly.
Higher and Higher
Celebrating his 18th birthday on campus, Roland took to the higher learning as with primary schooling. Though he had to spend more time in study and still had some trouble with grammar and undergraduate writing, he quickly took an interest in engineering; the development of systems and subsystems that supported a more primary concept. He finished his general education requirements and delved head first into the math-heavy world of mechanical engineering. Though he spent little time outside the labs and classrooms he made several fond friends. Throughout his college career he was part of several different activities including the Engineering Club, Cardio Club, and a sword-fighting club. Strangely enough Roland enjoyed the sword based combat as it allowed him to keep his body as energized as his mind. He also too several additional language classes, understanding that if he needed to converse or talk business with aliens who did not speak basic he would have to be able to understand them.
Finally his last year arrived with Roland drawing a 3.8 in his grade average. His senior project was a holographic facial recognition subsystem in a micronized version of a message droid. This particular project interested him because of the multitude of different software and hardware that had to work in tandem to produce the desired effect. The acceptance committee loved his idea and passed the entire design team for the well thought out piece of engineering. Roland obtained a dual major in both Mechanical and Electrical engineering.
The unique nature of the idea and execution catapulted Roland into a graduate program when he was 22. His parents became immensely proud of him and with the additional achievements of Dismeana, into a high profile career in the Coruscant business sector, they supported he continue his education as far as he could. Roland, already with that in mind, began work on his thesis; a more integrated holographic communication system.
When not working on his own personal thesis he maintained himself through a research assistance-ship working on a concept of more efficient electrical circuit systems. The development team that Roland worked with was comprised of several other graduate students of many different species, as well as his advisor and several members of the engineering department. Over the course of two years the development progressed, lost members, gained others and even when Roland's master thesis was complete, the system remained unfinished.
It was during a graduate faire that the designer drew the eye of a Republic Military adviser who saw the use of the graduate's project and, after a short hiatus period, contacted the student for a more proper inspection of the technology. Roland pitched the communication system to the republic military who saw an effective use of it, purchasing the concept from Roland through the university; this background system became a major communication system in many modern capital class Republic starships.
Desiring a higher knowledge of more electronic systems to incorporate a more natural flow in his developments, Roland returned to undergraduate studies to obtain his second degree in programming using his commission to finance what was to be several more years of learning. However, something unexpected arose that even Roland couldn't have foresaw. At 26 he fell in love.
Of Love and Heartbreak
In the first year of his second degree he met someone through the program; a young woman named Nishira Barchan, a sophomore student. They met in a lab that Roland was running on his assistance fellowship for one of his professors. She needed help with a ball joint on a particularly difficult lab and Roland was the only one available. The pair hit it off from their first interaction and soon Roland asked her for tea. It was rapid, it was powerful and she reciprocated. Something about the woman inspired his inventive spirit and it was not unusual for him to fill notebooks with ideas, concepts, and complex formulas that Nishira could only wonder about. As the second year of the degree wore on the pair became even closer, spending more and more time together. Roland discovered that Nishira was from a poorer family and had worked her way up to the university level by spirit alone. Her spirit, she said, and his kind intelligence were meant for each other. Roland was all to happy to agree; it was love.
The pair graduated together, Roland, 28, achieving a bachelors degree in computer programming in just three years time. Nishira obtained her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering.
For the following year the pair were utterly enamored with each other. Roland took a position developing for CorTech, a larger technology developer on Coruscant while Nishira found one at a smaller development firm in the political sector. The pair were happy, roomed together, bought a small high-rise apartment, new speeders; everything that a new couple would want. It wasn't long before they began to consider marriage.
His parents were happy to help them plan and after only a few months the date arrived. Roland was only several weeks before his 29th birthday. The day prior to the wedding they were separated in a family tradition of Namra's; the bride was not supposed to see the groom for the day and night before the wedding. Roland, blinded by love, did't question. The traditional wedding was held, the groom standing at the altar awaiting the bride. The supposedly happy day left the inventor in tears. Nishira vanished the day before the event, taking Roland for everything he had including what savings they had "shared," one of his new speeders, and everything of value they had at their small apartment; all in all Roland lost 70% of his total worth. Nishira, if that was her real name, was never found.
It left Roland completely heartbroken. He lost his career at CorTech and fell into a deep state of depression. Selling his speeder he became an alcoholic and had soon drank himself into a state of complete disarray. The only possessions he had were his notebooks, sketchpads. The once energetic man was a shadow of his former self. He wouldn't allow anyone to help him for his grief was far too deep; he shut out parents, friends, even his sister. From that day he has never looked for or desired a relationship of any kind. The downward spiral continued and by 30th he had moved back in with his parents in an attempt to obtain stability.
From the Ashes
With the help and support of his parents, his sister, Roland slowly built himself back up brick by brick. To get back on his feet he worked with his father doing manual labor as an electrician and slowly built a buffer for himself. It took a long time and several reevaluations of himself but Roland finally got to a point where he was able to live reliably on his own.
At 31 he reapplied to CorTech but was turned away on the grounds of being too well qualified. With the funds he had accrued he took several weeks and traveled from his parent's home on Coruscant to nearly a dozen different career opportunities. He was hired on my Northern Developers Inc. in the northern technology sector, a small time electronics development company who was always looking for talented developers. Like a painter who hadn't touched a canvas in years Roland's mind was a library not only good ideas but practical ones; concepts that a small time development team could handle without intimidating larger competitors. In the first year alone Northern Dev experienced a 300% increase in lucrative contracts; from 5 to 15. Several of the projects were accepted and adopted by Coruscant security and business enterprises and were hailed for improving output and protection of their employees.
The owner of NDI, an older man, began funneling the profits into the expansion of the company and before long the tiny development corporation had its own fabrication facility and nearly two dozen more full-time workers. Annually the development team received a massive bonus, a percentage of the success of the company. Devoted himself to the company that had literally saved him Roland banked the vast majority of his profits in case something like Nishira happened again.
Slowly his life opened up again. He found his way back to his friends, broke himself of his alcoholism, and just tried to live his life. The money he earned and banked were saved simply for a rainy day. Roland was unwilling to spend more than he had to to be comfortable. The apartment he owned was not luxurious but it had all the basic amenities of home and he enjoyed it. He found a new set of friends as the developers worked more on new projects. They would spend time together, go to pubs, recreational areas and activities. As Roland wanted for little during this time and was blessed with great foreword momentum; reaching the title of head developer in only five years. He had turned his life around and developed a strong relationship with the collective developers; true friends. Content with the position of head developer Roland remained happily employed for just less than a decade. It was near that mark that something unfortunate happened.
It was that very powerful people took notice in the quickly expanding company. A then-powerful manufacturing firm approached NDI's owner with an offer he couldn't refuse. Over the course of a night Roland had gone from happy to miserable. The new management brought in fresh faced engineering graduates and gutted the development team Roland had helped build from the ground up. Immediately productivity fell off as if torpedoed as the new company, Rulian Armaments, ordered armaments and weapons of war developed. Something of a pacifist by nature, Roland saw this as a deliberate blow against him as a person. He quit soon after at the age of 41
Monument to Technology
Roland, now with an amazing rap sheet and proven skilled by his time at NDI, was hired back on by CorTech as a team lead developer. While before he was considered too well qualified for the position it was well known among the engineering community that Roland had potent talent. CorTech was only too happy to have him and likely hoped to see their own commission numbers ruse but the man seemed to have lost some of his drive. After several months of working at his new position Roland rediscovered his drive as, in reorganizing his personal files from the mid-life-crisis, rediscovered his notebooks from years prior when he was dating Nishira. The developer, now with a significant amount of money saved, made a decision that would change the rest of his life. Plus, with the report of Rulian Armaments doing extremely poorly he saw little risk. He knew it would take a long time to pull off but he had very little to lose and so very much to gain.
Mr. Ricketts, now in his early 40s, began to reconnect with his original design team from NDI. Although he couldn't reach all of them he found that a large portion of his former colleagues, including the former owner, had a desire to develop together again. Roland knew their strengths and, when they left NDI, many expressed their disapproval of the buyout and still wanted to work together. Answering their old plea Roland brought them all back together. With his head high he applied himself for the next several years at CorTech, making several major developmental breakthroughs in the field of computational engineering and holographics that netted him a very hefty commission. Wanting nothing more than to resume his work with old colleagues and friends he quit CorTech much to the dismay of his bosses.
Finally, and with his head held high, he approached the now nearly bankrupt Rulian Armaments, who had done several large upgrades to the original facility. With the help of his friends he offered to buy the company from the CEO for a pittance, one which the beleaguered man quickly accepted. A 49 year old Roland, the new owner of a sizable armament company quickly returned things to the way they were. Rather than hiring new developers he mixed his veteran team with the new ones.
The reevaluation and reassignment of every aspect of the company took a mere week and less than a month later the company held its reopening under the name Northern Monument Technologies; named thus for the archaic look of the original factory building and the background of the technology sector.
From then onward, even until the present, he utilized his renown and personal skill as a designer to take on projects and commissions from all respectable comers. Respectable, to Roland, was someone who was working for the common good or on a project that would not harm the sentient beings of the galaxy. Roland declined, more than once, lucrative commissions for weapons, combat starships, and other implements of destruction. And, through the times that he owned the company he has fallen under the crunches of the economy. There would come years of slow demand and lack of ingenuity but, no matter the hardships Northern Monument stood as an obelisk against the corporate demand becoming a symbol for peace. Roland relished the image that the company was purveying and continued on the same line of operation.
Every now and again they would be asked to produce components for ships, holographic communication systems, even an environmental protection suit or two, but never was an object produced by NMT that could be used to harm sentients, only to protect them.
Further, over the more recent years and on into Roland's 50s, the CEO has utilized the substantial assets of the corporation to develop components for modern ships, designed ship hulls for higher efficiency and reliability, and developed some of the more advanced armors to come out of the republic. The largest change was more commissions by the Republic, though the stance of the company has remained strong.
His latest concept and successful prototype was something that he hoped would revolutionize protection of republic snipers; the Chameleon Weave Camouflage system. The development came when one of the secondary design teams lost a piece of an asteroid that they had been sampling for a potential source of cheap and readily accessible minerals. When they found the sample it had literally blended in with the papers on the developer's desk. The concept set Roland's mind to whirring, the design teams knowing all too well the look in their boss' eye.
Skills:
Multi-Lingual:
Fluant in:
Bocce
Duros
Comprehends:
Bothan
Binary
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 5
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 3
Leadership: 7
Unarmed: 1
Melee Weapons: 3
Ranged Weapons: 1
Alignment: +4
RP Sample:
He should have been used to this by now. The sweltering heat, the blinding light, noise that would leave him temporarily deafened. When he had founded NMT he didn't think it would ever come to this. He had done good, knew he had saved lives with the technologies he had created but, over the past decade or more, he had never gotten used to this. It was a necessary evil for his newest developments...
Roland wondered if he should let Manfred take the next press conference for him, he was starting to feel old.
Mr. Ricketts, you have been surprisingly mum on the true nature of this project, only that it was something the galaxy has never seen before. It has been years; to finally announce it now has a lot of us unsure of what to think. Will you be finally showing off this "Project Clear"?
Well that is a very pertinent question and I do admit that this conference has been a very long time coming. To the Northern Monument shareholders I assure you that the wait will certainly be worth it. Project Clear was initially commissioned by the great people of the Republic military. However, the request they made was a very tall order, indeed. And I quote; "... to give us a stronger battlefield presence without the enemy even knowing it."
Roland paused, setting down the little flimsy card he had just quoted. He felt giddy, his lips curled into a smile as the multitude of eyes stared up at him. Taking a step back reached down and withdrew a long thin box. It was fairly heavy but there was more than enough reason for that. Stepping around the podium he deposited the box on the waist high table and slid it to the edge closest to the viewers.
Project Clear is based on a new material that has never been utilized in such a way before. What I have here is a demonstration of what this material is capable of.
Slowly and deliberately he placed his hand on the metal box and activated several tiny pressure plates. With the command input the front and top of the box slid back and downward displaying that the interior was sectioned into five compartments each covered with thin plates of transparisteel. Within were five small irregularly shaped lumps placed before five different images. Each of the lumps appeared to be covered with a nearly exact copy of the image behind it.
Surronium. Roland paused and let the audience savor the word. This is a new metal alloy. It was found completely by accident and looked like this. Roland placed his hand above the first compartment where the image and the lump were the same dirty ferrous red.
However, we found that it had a strange property that allowed light to flow around the individual atoms along with being both very durably and resistant to many forms of projected energy. Once the light penetrates the material it matches anything behind it to a nearly flawless degree. You wouldn't believe the amount of times we lost our initial sample
His comment drew a brief chuckle from the crowd. Roland slowly reached his hand down to the side and punched another code; instantly the images behind the lumps randomized.
In only a few minutes these lumps will have completely changed to the color and apparent texture of the image behind it. This is Project Clear or, more specifically, this, ladies and gentlemen is Project Clear.
Roland's arm came up to point to the far side of the room, a sizable distance away. There, tucked in the corner, was a vaguely human shaped mound of what looked to be heavy cloth. As the audience, who had turned back to see what Roland was pointing at, watched on they saw the mound move and stand upright. The wearer had been nearly invisible to the naked eye thanks to the bright light; there were no shadows to give away his position prematurely. Roland smiled as several of the more bewildered audience began to applaud as the prototype subject stepped foreword looking as if a piece of wall had come away with him.
The cloak looked heavy, thick and in turning the audience saw the true color of the material, a deep gun-metal gray that shifted to the color of the wall-paper and back. Roland chuckled that half the cloak was one color from this light. Looking back down at the box his smile deepend.
Folks, I'd like to direct your attention back to the front.
Some of those that looked gasped as the lumps that looked in stark contrast to the images only minutes before had shifted to blend nearly perfectly. As the subject mounted the stage and came to stand next to Roland the CEO saw the smile on his tester's face.
I'll take your questions now.
The cacophony that followed was nearly deafening as Roland tried to pick out a suitable question. The sole thing that was ringing off every mouth, surprisingly, was how. When this? When that? Waiting he put his hands up to help silence them.
The Chameleon Weave Camouflage system will be in full production within the next several months.
Anyone else? Ah, you sir.
Yes... this would be a very profitable day indeed.
