Xacio 555

[tachyon]

Name: Xacio 555 (lit. Stasis Pod 555)
Age: 21
Species: Vailen (Humanoid)
Chronological Age: 54,000,000 (spent it in stasis)
Strength: 7
Abilities/Strengths: Can telepathicaly control anything with an electric circut (doors, computers, security cameras etc), can also do this with robots, but it is more difficult (he must be touching them or looking them in the 'eye'), trained in armed and unarmed combat, various tools and equipment. *Vailen young possess the ability to turn invisible when scared, but lose this trait around the age of 12.
Favourite Weapons: Antique S&W Model 500H, FedArms Model 18 laser carbine, Colt PPR (Plasma Pulse Rifle), gauss sniper rifle of Vailen design, combat nanoknife.
Weaknesses: Immune system is not used to the bacteria and viruses of this galaxy, psychic abilities don't work on living organisims (includes cyborgs, depending on what part of them is robotic), is subject to the usual weaknesses of an ordianry human.
Personality: Loner, cold and distant, apathetic, merciless, cunning
Appearance: Average height, medium build, short red hair, blue/gray eyes, though his costume varies depending on the situation he always wears a respirator outside of his ship.

A mercenary and bounty hunter, his loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder. The last of the Vailen, Xacio 555 lives by his own strange code of honour; he will only hunt those who he sees as worthy opponents.
*More on his history and that of the Vailen later!

[tachyon]

History of the Vailen
The Vailen were once an all powerfull race that lived long before anything remotly resembling a human being had evolved. The Vailen Imperium covered the whole of their galaxy, Teiovail (lit. "Home of the Gods". Known to us as NGC-4472, an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo). Their culture was based around strong bonds within families, living by a code of warrior ethics and absolute loyalty to the Imperium. Their code of honour forbade the strong from dominating the weak, instead it being the their duty to protect them. They were taught that each Vailen had a Kuaxa (warrior spirit) that was unique to them, and what made them happiest was realted to what their Kuaxa was. They eventually evolved to a point that it was possible for them to use various psychic abilities, ranging from telekinesis to ESP. At the pinnacle of their civilization, there were over 670 trillion Vailen living in over 15 billion star systems in Teiovail.
A scientist by the name of Fracel Unxio came to believe that the Vailen had reached the limit of where natural evolution could take them. He thought that in order for the next level to be reached, they would have to adopt total cybernetic conversions to transcend the weakness of flesh and blood into the immortality of metal and circuts. Unxio's supporters grew, and soon they formed the Anxa'tockai Zenpaf (Cult of the Machine). The Imperium declared them a terrorist organization after they perormed coversions on unwilling citizens, and so began the Lin Kuaman (Great War). It would last 18,000 years.
The Vailen fought bravely, but in the end their was no way to counter the sickening tactics of the Cult, for every warrior that fell would be resurected as a mindless drone. The Vailen resorted to a policy of commiting suicide rather than falling victim, however this was in vain as the Cult could even bring the dead back to life as one of thier arcane war machines. Finnaly, in their most desparate hour, the Imperium took what few millions of its citizens were left and created hundreds of gigantic sleeper ships. The hope was to begin again far from the war that had befallen Teiovail, and rebuild their once great Imperium. It was a noble idea, but it would eventually spell the end for the Vailen.
The ships were large and slow, making them easy targets. The Cult hunted them down without mercy, and soon only two remained. The unpiloted ships were controlled by the most advanced AI computers ever created, and it was they who made the decision that it was safer to flee the galaxy altogether. Just beyond the edge of Teiovail they were ambushed by almost the entire Cult fleet. In a heroic sacrifice, the ship carrying the remnants of the Vailen Imperial Millitary, Vailen Vai (Pride of Vailen) ordered the other ship, Suilei, to accelerate to just below the speed of light then jettison its power core. Suilei complied. The remaining sleeper ship self destructed in such a way as to use the power of cores to create a black hole, subsequently destroying the Cult's main fleet.
The Suilei, severly damaged, lacking power and unable to accelerate beyond the speed of light, drifted with only its inertia to guide it towards an unremarkable spiral galaxy in the distance. Over time it beacame more intelligent, more independant untill many, many years after originaly leaving Teiovail Suilei became sentient. She immediatly wished she hadn't. Damage caused durring exodus meant that her systems could not keep all of the occupants alive for the amount of time it would take to reach the distant galaxy. Suilei had only enough power to sustain one of the 800,000 people on board. After much thought, she opted for the youngest, a mere infant. The last child of Vailen.
Suilei, named for the Vailen goddess of peace, devoted herself to rasing the child in stasis pod Xacio 555.....

[tachyon]

History of Xacio 555
The first things that Xacio ever saw were rolling green fields and medows stretching from horizon to horizon, and the beutiful angellic for of a young woman. Suilei, the sentient AI of a Vailen sleeper ship, had created this reality so she could prepare him for the hardships that were to come. For several centuries now she had been monitoring the various transmissions comming from a large spiral galaxy she had been aproaching for the past 54 million years. The races that inhabited it were fairly primitive by Vailen standards ( some had only just mastered orbital flight), but with no way for her to change course and little hope of making it to another galaxy populated with intelligent life, Suilei decided to take a chance. Using her emergency rocket engines she brought herself to a stop in a planetary nebula just inside the glalactic plane.
In the artificial reality, Suilei began to teach Xacio 555 all the things normal children learn; how to speak, play, eat, read, write and all other fundamentals. While his mind grew, so did his body. Suilei had changed the parameters of the stasis field to allow Xacio's body to develop as it would under normal circumstances. She also taught him about who he was and who his people were; their culture, language and history, including their demise at the hands of the Anxa'tockai Zenpaf. This continued for 4 years until...
Suilei picked up a transmission. It was comming from a vessel only a few million kilometers away, the closest anything had come to her in a long time. She had been preparing for this eventuallity for just as long too. Faced with the fact that she had no propulsion and her communications array had been destroyed Suilei had loaded Xacio 555's stasis pod into the cargo bay of a Vailen scout ship in her main hanger several thousand years before. Now the time had come to fulfil her purpose as Xacio's protector and release him to the care of others. Then, just as she was about to launch the ship, she found she couldn't. Not because of some techincal fault, but because she didn't want to.
Suilei may have been created as an AI, but she had become something more. She had been taking care of Xacio for millions of years, but it was only in the past few that she had really felt anything for the lone child. She had actually enjoyed herself. She liked seeing him grow and learn. She had learned and grew herself. She was his...mother. She loved him! A thought crossed Suilei's mind; What if I kept him here, with me, in the artificial reality? I could raise him, see him grow. And then... She realised the futility of it. She could keep him her for the rest of his life, but then what? He was a living creature. All things that live eventually die. What sort of mother could do that to her child? she thought, At least out there he has a chance at happiness, at a real life. Suilei made her decision. With the mystery ship getting father away, with only a few minutes untill the window would be closed, and with her heart breaking, she launched Xacio 555 towards the distant spacecraft.
The commercial freighter Shizuhara Maru picked up an unidentifiable signal while traveling through a mostly uncharted region of space in December 2202. When the crew inverstigated the source they discovered a small ship of a totally unknown design containing a stasis pod occupied by a 4 year old child. All attempts to realease the child from the pod failed, so upon reaching their destination the ship's crew handed the pod over to the local medical authorities and the mystery ship to the security forces. A team of doctors and scientists managed to safely revive its occupant, and were amazed by the alien childs physiology. When startled he would become invisible untill he had calmed down, an ability not thought to be possessed naturaly by non-reptilians. After about a week he had become used to the doctors and stoped, and they concluded that this was a defence mechanism of sorts. The child was making good progress, but not for the first time in his life that was about to change.
A large medical research firm, Cirtech Industries, found out about the child named Xacio 555 (they had mistook the ID code on the pod for a name). They offered vast sums of money for him, but having been long suspected of conducting illegal research and experimentation the Xacio's doctors refused. In the space of one month the following occured: The hospital in which Xacio was being treated was completly gutted by fire, Xacio and most of the doctors presumed dead. The hanger in which the Valien ship was housed was destroyed when a neighbouring fuel tank exploded killing 14 ground crew, no trace of the ship was found. All remaing doctors and any others who knew about Xacio were all killed in a series of accidents and aparent suicides. And the frieghter Shizuhara Maru went went missing, and was subsequently declared lost with all hands. Any who suspected the truth knew to keep their mouths shut.
The idea of an assassin that could become invisible was of great interest to Cirtech. The began mental conditioning and physical training for the role, also noting posible psychic potential. But when Xacio lost the ability to turn invisible at the age of 13 (as all Vailen do, or perhaps I should say did) despite his newfound talent of controlling electronic objects Cirtech declared the experiment to be a failure and was to be terminated, instead they were to focus on the advanced technology being reverse-engineered from the spaceship. The final transmission from the research facility stated that a "containment breach had occured while transporting experiment E22-X555 to the incinerator". When the installation failed to report back a security team was sent. All they found was a 1 kilometer wide crater where the installation had once been. The official report cited 'meltdown of the fusion reactor resulted in the compete destruction of the instalation and the deaths of all 789 personnel'.
6 months later the CEO of Cirtech Industries was found dead in his home, killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Police were unable to explain how his advanced home security system had shut itself off...

[Ash]

So much to read....
Nice background! ;D

[tachyon]

You should have seen what I had to cut out of it.
I hope no one thinks hes too strong, I tried to make him balanced.

[tachyon]

The Smith & Wesson Model 500H, the most powerfull production revolver in the world. Xacio personal weapon of choice.



And the Model 500 compared to Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum. (the .44 is the small one.)

[tachyon]

Nightfall

Class: Unknown
Role: Reconnaissance/Infiltrator vessel
Powerplant: Unknown
Weapons: None
Length: 30m
Wingspan: 25m
Mass: Variable

Nightfall is Xacio 555's personal starship, a crescent-winged, elegant beauty. She is, in all likelihood, the most advanced vessel in the galaxy. The first thing one would notice upon seeing her is that she is completely black, but black beyond any possible colouration; almost as if she is a ship-sized hole in the fabric of the universe itself. Another noticeable aspect of her appearance is her complete lack of windows, doors, landing gear, hatches, engine ports, hull panels, weld lines, rivets and any other markings on her surface, appearing as one whole piece rather than an assembled machine. If one were to get close enough to touch her (unlikely as that is), they would find they would not be able to feel her surface. This is because she is completely frictionless, whether this is through materials used or construction methods is unknown, but it allows Nightfall to travel at incredible (and theoretically impossible!) speeds. She can reach any part of the galaxy from any other part in less than 48 hours. Nightfall is also invisible to all forms of sensory equipment, though she does leave a short-lived trail of Cherenkov particles in her wake when traveling faster than light. She can also manipulate her mass to make herself appear as a larger or smaller vessel on sensors.
Despite her unsettling appearance and phenomenal abilities, Nightfall carries no weapons of any kind, instead she uses her speed, stealth and near indestructibility to avoid confrontations.
Nightfall is a living ship, but is neither a machine nor a creature. She shares a telepathic link with Xacio 555, and her actions and even her appearance are affected by his moods. That being said, she also has a very distinct personality of her own which is often at odds with her owner. Like an over-protective pet she can get jealous and hostile towards other beings Xacio interacts with. She was (and still is) hostile towards Keiralena due to her relationship with Xacio, though she would never harm her in any way. Although she is extremely intelligent, Nightfall finds it difficult to act freely of her own accord. Some might assume this to be a safety constraint of some type; in reality, she is very insecure of herself and relies on Xacio's input. But she is learning...