C'est ce que j'ai dit.
Jim 'Merlin' Perch
“Today's a fine day to not die.”
-Merlin

T H E B A S I C S
|Name| Jameson Perch
|Birth Date| 1.8.2328
|Age| 29
|Species| Terran
|Gender| Male

A P P E A R A N C E
|In Depth Appearance|
Jim is above average height, peering out at 5'11". His thick, wavy, hazel hair doesn't grow down to meet his shoulders, but instead climbs upwards like a skyscraper under construction, with the mane only becoming wavier and frizzier with the taller heights it achieves, therefore he keeps it short and combs it to the right with the front flicked backwards to keep it under control. His steely blue eyes are an immediate indicator for the stranger about the man that they are about to meet. Bushy eyebrows rest like an umbrella over the grim eyes. Unkempt stubble adorns the jawline of Merlin, while his prominent cheekbones seem to sink his eyeballs. Jim weighs approximately 145lbs and although he is not in warrior condition, he is in reasonably good shape, the shades of muscle definition can be found under inspection. His left arm from the elbow down is synthetic due to a combat scenario with some Rikari pirates when his fighter was hit. The port side of the spacecraft buckled and crumbled his bones and tendons, so the military surgeons decided high-end cybernetics were the route to go as Merlin was currently on route for an extremely decorated career in the Navy.



|Scars, Tattoos, Piercings|
Jim has a tattoo on his right bicep of the naval fleet badge he was in back on Earth. He typically has it bandaged up with gauze to hide his previous affiliations. He also has a scar from a maintenance accident above his left hip bone when a sheet of metal under large pressures buckled and pierced him.
G E T T I N G T O K N O W M E
|Job|
Captain of the Soaring Sparrow.
|Likes & Dislikes|
✔ Space: there really is no place like home
✔ Explosions
✔ Crew meal times
✔ Classic loves stories, real or not
✘ Swearing
✘ Price hagglers
✘ People who talk through movies
✘ When people invade his cockpit
|Habits|
1. Flying the Sparrow by hand, both in empty space and in chaotic situations, and both typically situations that the computers are more than capable of handling themselves.
2. The look-and-say sequence. Merlin has achieved nearly 40 Mb of data for the puzzle since he started over 10 years ago.
3. Sniffing his fingers. Anything he's touched and if the scent may still be on his finger tips, he will smell them.
|Fears|
☠ Being alone in the vast emptiness (known as Pioneer's Hysteria in the trade markets), which is why meal times are so appreciated, and why space has the greatest respect of anything he has witnessed.
☠ Slugs, they have no purpose, are unbelievably ugly, and feel disgusting. For this reason there is no job in the universe that could make him go to Taroon. Ever.

D E L V I N G D E E P E R
|Personality|
♦ Serious ♦ Dry ♦ Dependable ♦ Loyal ♦
Jim is, primarily, a captain. And with that he bears the responsibility of his crew. They are his and he is theirs. Therefore his life is the job until their fate is not within his hands. He may joke around occasionally (occasionally), but he is always concerned for his crew. This mentality has stopped him from having any real friends or relationships as the further it develops, the more he feels responsible for keeping it afloat. On the flip side of this though, it is difficult to find a more loyal man. Merlin will stick by you when you need it and is not afraid to fire off a few rounds to keep the vultures at bay if it means the coyotes come out to play. His experience across the systems means that he is wise and dependable, aware of many things that would be pitfalls to the average captain, and uses this knowledge to ensure safety. Typically quite a cold and distant person when you first meet him, he may warm up to you eventually. The eyes show the meaning of him, and that is 'business first, everything else later'. Always ready for a fight, but never looking for one.
|Place of Origin|
An American colony on a space habitat orbiting Jupiter.
|History|
When Jim was born, his father said that he cried for a minute or two then stopped and just watched everyone. Observed them, as if he were taking mental notes on the entire room. His father had always said that Jim would grow up to be very aware and very wise, and his dad was right. Born from a zero-gravity welder and a cleaner, Jim was raised comfortably but didn't have many luxurious, but enough food to keep him fed and enough clothes to keep him warm. For that he has always been grateful and used to give his parents portions of his wages as a child with a weekend job. When he was 18, Jim enrolled in the Terran Federation Naval Academy, or TFNA for short. There he excelled and was fast-tracked to Year Two. His abilities with a ship were unmatched and his leadership and mission skills thrusted him forward. During simulation runs with the other recruits, many of them would scramble to be under his command, easy points in the Year Tournaments, while others banded together to bring down the beloved Jameson. It was in the Academy that Jim earned his nickname, Merlin. Merlin had two meanings: one, it was the name of a specific falcon, the Merlin Falcon, which was famed for its speed and agility, much like Jim's boatsman displays many pointed out; and two, he was magic in a ship.
It wasn't until he lost his arm that things started to go downhill. After a standard maintenance of the baradium chassis on his boat went wrong and rutted Merlin in the gut, he was fixed up and a week later was sent out in the same ship as a live exercise. The Rikari pirates were average pilots at best, but there were thirty of them against four naval cadets. By the time Jim was hit, the remaining three ships were heaving and spluttering, barely holding together. Bad intel had nearly cost them their lives as HQ had reported ten combatants. That was when a missile punched the side of the boat. The weak SBM1 missiles shouldn't have done anything to the side of the ship, it was a baradium chassis - the toughest material ever devised by the Terran Federation and a recipe the Kongi were desperate to get their hands on - with a baradium-diamond coating, lightweight and extremely tough. But the missile broke through and buckled the port-side wall, slamming the chassis against Jim's body. He pressed the missile button with his remaining hand and ordered a retreat from the battle before anyone else was seriously damaged as HQ were still deciding. After the first two ships had been hit, two of the pilots had requested a retreat but the had declined. After the third, another request was sent, even more urgently. Sick of the inaction by top-brass, Jim removed the squadron from the skirmish before he lost a friend or three. While knocked out from the medication, the doctors realised his entire forearm bone had been ground to dust by the impact. They amputated and when he woke up, Merlin discovered he was now missing a piece of his body. It was later discovered in an investigation that the chassis was poorly built, and the pressure on the left side of the frame kept causing the bars to buckle, allowing the missile to punch through. The final nail in the coffin for Jim's naval career was the death of his father. Throughout the years, Jim had been very close with has father, a man he respected and trusted very much. His mother had become loose and an addict, and his parents had drifted but never father and son. So when his graduation date was confirmed, Jim informed his father who took time off work to come and see the ceremony. On the trip to Earth from Jupiter, pirates attacked the ship and killed his father. Jim found out during the ceremony, at which point he realised that if the Terran Federation couldn't protect one of their own, never mind a civil servants family, how could he really give the rest of his life to this job? Jim walked off the stage and never looked back, wanted for arrest for desertion by the Terran Navy. He bought a ship and named it the Soaring Sparrow after the joke his father used to say about how he fly when he was a child in the trainee ships, quickly and abruptly, but he always knew what he was doing. Jim was his fathers own little Soaring Sparrow, and he never wanted to forget that.
|Extra|
Always carries a handgun, tucked away out of sight, as well as a knife.