Post by Kella on Jul 23, 2012 22:17:02 GMT -5
Name: Sebastian Monroe
Age: 31
Race: Human
Birth place: Tralus
Height: 6'4
Weight: 187 lbs
Eye Color: Dark brown
Hair Color: Black
Sebastian Monroe is the quintessential tall, dark and handsome, and he finds the effects of this cliche to be rather intriguing. His height and charismatic smile put other businessmen at ease, establishing a baseless sense of trust, while his dark eyes and strong jaw send the more worthless woman swooning.
Sebastian's build is fit and muscular, for the sake of practicality rather than vanity. He wears his hair at a moderate length and lets it take its natural curl, and his olive skin is darkened by days in the Corellian sun and travels abroad. There are certain and very convenient advantages to taking care of one's appearance, and a glance at Sebastian proves he knows this very well.
Sebastian can almost always be found in an oxford and slacks, though he wears them with the same ease and comfort as lounge clothes. He has a collection of very expensive and very well-tailored suits, one for every occasion and nearly every whim.
There's little evidence of the more exciting -- and dangerous -- side of Sebastian's career, except for a few small scars, easily explained away with raw can edges and slippery stairs. All in all he exudes the impression of a suave, savvy businessman.
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Personality:
Sebastian Monroe is a man of unparalleled intelligence simply because few others could be compelled to travel in the same direction. He has a talent for learning and picks up new skills with incredible quickness. Even when he finds something challenging, his work is rewarded with a far greater increase in ability than an average person's would be. Sebastian might have brought great good to the galaxy, had he applied this intelligence towards medicine or technology or his passion for and prodigious talent with the piano. However, Sebastian is utterly lacking in empathy. Some would call it Antisocial Personality Disorder, he calls it having a clear head. Dedicating his life to one expertise, one occupation would be... boring. No longer a challenge.
Sebastian's desire for challenge is something like an addiction. An experience is new, and thrilling, and stimulating for a while, but as his skill grow the thrill fades, and he becomes desensitized. So he must seek a greater challenge, a greater risk, to be satisfied. Sebastian couldn't find that satisfaction within the boundaries of morals and responsible citizenry, so he left them behind like an outgrown toy.
Despite his want of empathy, Sebastian has no lack of charisma. He nearly always appears relaxed, exuding a confidence that does not need to be announced, but is rather intrinsically understood. He's as much of an expert in the subtleties of social interaction as he is black market business, and likes to manipulate conversations to his amusement. Planting ideas without speaking their words, inflating egos or ripping them to shreds, creating or defeating certain impressions of himself, these are goals Sebastian finds fascinating, regardless of his success at accomplishing them in any given situation.
His lack of empathy and constant confidence make him an excellent liar, as he has neither the nagging guilt morality brings nor the anxiety associated with the danger of getting caught. It's incredibly difficult, then, to know what he's truly thinking, as even the most natural-seeming confession might be a calculated act. Only the most perceptive are aware of this possibility, however, as the more self-centered too quickly swallow their wariness with their vodka.
Skills: Economic analysis, prototype construction, project planning/scheming, concert piano, other various instruments, wooing unsuspecting women, smuggling, infiltration, undercover work
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 6
Intelligence: 9
Speed: 7
Leadership: 5
Unarmed: 7
Melee Weapons: 4
Ranged Weapons: 5
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Bio:
Sebastian Monroe was born to a woman whose good intentions could not make up for the fact that her husband had died while the boy was very young. It was a mining accident, which on Tralus were rare enough to be tragic, but common enough to not be shocking. Miranda spent every day wishing that her husband was still alive, for two particular reasons. First, so that he could be proud of their remarkable son, and second, so that he could help her figure out what in the world to do with him.
The little boy was easily bored. Picture books failed to impress him, so by the age of four he was reading novels, and by six he devoured technical manuals. When he first started school, at the small local elementary, his marks were horrendous. He simply could not be bothered to recite his ABC's when he wanted to read about the history of hydraulic power. Miranda, particularly determined to nurture her son's success, convinced the school to place Sebastian in higher-level classes. His marks rapidly improved.
And so began Miranda's constant struggle -- keeping her son entertained and challenged. By the time he was thirteen, he had read every book in the little mining town's library. He would build contraptions in their basement out of scrap, or fiddle around with homemade radios, or start a business out of their garage. But as soon as he had mastered a hobby, as soon as his mother could stand proudly and say My son made that, he would grow bored and move on to something else. However, Miranda did manage to provide Sebastian with something that kept his interest.
When Sebastian was seven, he and the other second-year students began music class. The school had only a few very old and very worn instruments, but Sebastian was intrigued. He set to learning each instrument, and though he showed incredible natural skill, the piano grew to hold a special place in his mind. There was something about its breadth, both in physical presence and in sound, that filled him with a distinct sense of respect. Miranda kept tucking money away, and on Sebastian's tenth birthday she gave him a new -- not brand new, but new to him -- Piano, and every afternoon he would fill their little house with music and his mother's face with a smile.
However, as bright as Sebastian's present and future seemed to be, his teachers and the other school officials expressed... concerns. Sebastian seemed unable to empathize with the other children -- or with any other people, for that matter. He had gotten in trouble a few times during his first few years, but never again after that. It wasn't so much that he'd had a change of heart, so much as he'd learned exactly when to stop to avoid getting into trouble.
Miranda would hear none of it, however. She assured them that they were simply misunderstanding his intentions, and recited the many kindnesses he'd given to her over the years. The teachers would simply nod, and smile, but they could never quite shake the dark furrow from their brow.
When Sebastian was eleven, he committed his first crime. The idea came to him while he was washing his hands in the convenience store bathroom, having been sent to pick up milk. There was a little sign above the chipped mirror that read, Shoplifters will be prosecuted. Sebastian thought this was silly, given how absolutely arrogant it was. You couldn't prosecute someone you couldn't catch.
And then he wondered, could they catch him? There was only one way to find out.
Fifteen minutes later, he was walking casually down the street, admiring the candy bar in his hand as the tingle of adrenaline faded from his palms. He ate it on the walk home, tossed the wrapper in the neighbor's rubbage bin, and delivered the milk to his mother, who was never the wiser.
From then on, Sebastian's crimes grew in scale and boldness. The ease of shoplifting from the convenience store was disappointing, and Sebastian soon moved on. The crowning achievement of his sixteenth year was stealing two hundred thousand credits worth of technology from the local electronics store. He left it all in an abandoned barn ten miles out of town, and slipped a note under the store owner's door -- void of fingerprints and his own handwriting, of course -- detailing its location. What was he going to do with a barn of mediocre electronics?
It was the first time he'd gotten the opportunity to truly watch the aftermath of one of his crimes, and also the last time he did so. It was the challenge not the result of the crime that he so enjoyed, and it only took the suspicious glance of one police officer to remind him that returning to the scene of the crime was predictable, and therefore stupid.
The Police gave his little string of crimes their own folder, but Sebastian knew exactly when to stop to avoid getting in trouble.
As he made his way through the upper years of his schooling, his peers' opinion of him was relatively homogenous and somewhat neutral. There were a few, those blessed with perception and insight, that utterly despised him. The others, however, rode on the ebb and flow of his malice and politeness. He had a girlfriend whenever he wanted one, and a handful of hopefuls whenever he didn't. But he saw such girls as shallow and meaningless, and enjoyed playing with their minds before discarding them.
Sebastian graduated top of his year, and gave an appropriate and quotable speech. He missed only one question on the Corellia Systems Higher Education Standardized Performance Test, and attended the Cornet School of Business on a full scholarship.
It was a teary good-bye for Miranda, and a polite one for Sebastian. He'd grown bored of Tralus, and it was time for something new.
Sebastian greatly enjoyed his time at the University, both excelling in his studies and in his efforts to make trouble. Yet, without fail, he always managed to lay the trail of dominoes so that the first to fall rested under someone else's hand. He stole and trespassed and manipulated and threatened simply because he could. The more difficult the feat the more obsessive he became over accomplishing it.
By the time Sebastian graduated at 22, he was an expert in the world of business. That was not the only skill he had honed at University, however. He was heavily involved in his school's music program, one of the few activities he approached with no ulterior motives -- the challenge of pushing his abilities, of playing more and more difficult pieces and then finally beginning to compose his own, engaged his entire mind. He also developed an aura; the cool, suave confidence that would continue to define his reputation over the years.
A newly-christened graduate, Sebastian quickly found work in Tyrena, Corellia's beloved river city. It was the kind of place with clean streets and high property values, the natural habitat of businessmen. Sebastian fit right in.
For the next four years he climbed his way up the cliff of the business world, passing his competitors more with timing and foresight than brute force. Various side-projects, including embezzling and black-market art trade, amused him in his spare time. He liked to scan the public reports of various companies and make casual predictions about their futures. His accuracy barely beat chance, but every wrong guess was another lesson, another sweep over the whet stone.
And Sebastian Monroe grew sharper and sharper.
When he was 25, he quit his job to buy a failing airspeeder company, whose owner would have felt lucky to give the company away. Sebastian did not see some hidden potential, and he did not have some magical insight -- rather, he simply saw a great challenge.
It took him two years to begin turning a profit, in which time he lived off of savings and credit and dedicated the majority of his time to overhauling the company. He fired all of the old employees and completely re-wrote the employment contracts, cutting benefits and pay. He marketed the jobs to recent Corellian immigrants, who quickly snapped them up.
The company had had an efficient and wholesome manufacturing process, and was selling the Airspeeders for a slim profit, which put them in the same price bracket as much cheaper and much less reliable models. Rather than basing prices off of manufacturing costs, Sebastian set the price of the new models in the middle price bracket. Then began a massive marketing campaign, including a new name and mission statement, which sold the formerly bargain-level Airspeeders (with only small modifications) as luxury vessels for the everyday man.
The Adega line sold like ice cream on a summer day.
Adega Airships grew steadily from them on, carving itself a nice niche in the Airspeeder market. The company was well on its way to becoming a household name.
However, with that success came a problem. Sebastian was bored again. He'd anticipated this, and so in his overhaul of the company, he'd left small breadcrumbs for himself. An endless loop here, a shell account there, and little consistent inconsistencies along the way. So, beneath the surface of Adega Airships he began to build another organization.
Just as beneath his mansion, nestled on a wide and very expensive swath of the Gold Beaches, a dozen minutes by airspeeder from Tyrena, he began to build another home. Corellia was riddled with underground caverns and passages, courtesy of the immigrant Selonians, so subterranean dwelling was nothing special. However, Sebastian had gotten an incredibly low price on the mansion and the property, as all of the underground tunnels had flooded, on account of bordering the sea.
Sebastian used the generous profits from his new, shadier business dealings to completely renovate the mansion and -- much more quietly -- the tunnels below. Sebastian hired several out-of-work Selonian contractors to complete his project. When finished, the newly-watertight underground estate stretched for kilometers, including a glass-roofed atrium on the seafloor.
Sebastian had been careful to hire contractors without many personal connections. He'd been vague as to the length of the project, and offered them free housing on-site. They were allowed to come and go as they pleased when they weren't getting paid to work, but Sebastian often generously offered them drinks and entertainment. The end result was a construction staff largely cut off from the rest of the world. When the project was complete, Sebastian paid each man in lead and fed their bodies to his newly purchased sharks.
From this undersea atrium, Sebastian managed his second business. He wove a dense but orderly web, no shadow spared a bit of sticky silk. Black market deals were his favorite industry, but he did also greatly enjoy insider trading and coups. By the time Sebastian was 29, this illicit business was established just as well as his legitimate one, and proved far more profitable.
Sebastian was hardly content to remain in his lair, however. It was more of a retreat, a place from which to observe and plan. The real fun came with getting his hands dirty. Sebastian had begun taking martial arts lessons during his second year of University, another way to push himself to his limits, and in more recent years he'd shifted to combat training. He loved the thrill of planning an operation, the intensity of carrying it ought.
At one point, he infiltrated the headquarters of a competing company, Garma, and stole the proprietary plans for their new line of luxury airspeeders. Instead of using the ideas himself (and therefore cheapening the delight of research and development) he sold the plans to the company's largest rival.
Nine and a half months later, Sebastian watched with amusement -- through the safety of public holonews -- as Garma sued its rival for the theft of proprietary research, and won.
Slowly, Sebastian compiled a staff to support his illustrious illicit dealings -- body guards and informants and contractors and connections. He was careful to ensure that each and every one owed him personally. It was a difficult, laborious process but, well, that's what made it fun.
In fact, Sebastian Monroe was having a great deal of fun in general. Adega Airships was thriving, and when the whim struck him, Sebastian would hand an original design over to research and development. He called his mother monthly, and told her all about the company and the glamorous places and glamorous people he was meeting. On the holidays, he'd return to Tralus for a few days and play her some new song he'd composed, about which she'd rave to her friends for weeks.
Then other times, he'd recline in his atrium and watch the sharks swim above, plotting some new scheme that set his mind awhirl with infinitesimal details. He'd kill a man and leave no trace, just to prove it was possible, then offend some powerful, dangerous man simply because it made his job more difficult. He even sought out allegiance with the budding Sith Empire, and through them the Sith Order, simply because he'd never worked with such an organization before.
And so Sebastian's thirtieth birthday came and went, as the stakes grew only higher, and as Sebastian walked only closer and closer to the edge.
It was a comfortable 71 degrees in the atrium. The light of the sun wove across the dark tile floor in diamonds, mimicking the surface of the ocean above. Sebastian's fingers danced across the keys of their own accord, pulling some light, lilting melody from his subconscious.
His mind and eyes wandered, settling on the languid shadow of a shark as it passed within a yard of the glass. It was the same material used in starship windows, able to withstand incredible pressures. The glass alone had cost several million credits, but every second spent in the scintillating blue light, watching the anemones twitch and the kelp sway, was another credit proved worthwhile.
The broad room was largely unfurnished. At the rear of the room, towards the shore, there was a well-stocked bar and a square of couches, crisp right angels lending a modern feel. Centered under the broad glass was a grand piano, whose polished black wood gleamed. To the right was a tastefully comfortable leather chair, ringed by knee-high shelves which were stacked with all manner of archival datapads. It was from there that he plucked at the strings of the world.
There was a pleasant symmetry, then, in the fact that he stroked the keys of the piano with just as much skill and dexterity, except the piano drew him out of the world rather than deeper into it. That was the one thing that truly had the potential to occupy his entire mind, to still every extraneous thought and channel every heartbeat into the ecstasy of focus.
Soon his musings dissolved into the deep resonance and light trillings of Perattio's Sixth Concerto, and Sebastian's mind was at peace.
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