Nickname(s): Sparks Gender: Female Age: 25 Years Birthday: 24th October 798A.S Birthplace: Gregory Private Hospital, Lenox Hill, Planet Manhattan, New York Place Of Residence: ITV Adventure Galley Affiliation: Freelancer Known Craft:
Height: 189cm Hair: Auburn Eyes: Hazel Distinguishing Marks: Though the spots themselves have long since faded, Sarah still bears the ghosts of freckles, a string of pale dots meandering across the bridge of her nose.
Tall and wiry, Sarah is the sort of woman who always looks one strong breeze away from falling in a sprawling heap. More often then not, a smile lingers beneath pale blue eyes, radiating the same quiet sort of fool's confidence that has graced officers at the head of countless doomed armies in ages past. She walks with the casual loping slide of a lifetime runner, pushing a pace shorter companions often struggle to keep, arms hanging at her side, and mind often somewhere else altogether.
Personality
Sarah is an eternal wanderer, the sort of person who would spend an hour watching the enigmatic dance of a nebulae for no other reason then that she believes it deserves to be seen. Every kilometer traveled brings with it something new to see, every ship on the scanners another wonder. A mechanical prodigy, Sarah sees past the mundane motion of a ship drifting through space to the complex process required to design, construct and launch tonnes of terrestrial metal into deep space, and in that, she finds a certain poetry. People; however, she finds far more complex.
Carelessly blasé when it comes to risk Sarah is, perhaps, not so much unaware of her own vulnerability as she is in denial of it. Whether the challenge is running a mile or flying point on a bomber mission, Sarah's hand is always among the first up, ready for the next adventure. Born and raised in suburban Manhattan, Sarah still carries remnants of a high-society education, though time among the rogues has instilled in her a dangerously ruthless streak - one that she struggles to ignore.
History
Born to Tanya and Johnathon McFarlen on a warm October morning in 798A.S, the youngest McFarlen lived what passed for a modest early childhood among Manhattan's elite. When Johnathon, working on contract for the Liberty Navy, was granted license to market a discontinued navigation project, the resulting profits catapulted the McFarlens into the upper echelons of the already-affluent Manhattan society.
Denied nothing, Sarah's monthly education fee alone was more then a wage slave on Pittsburgh would have seen in a lifetime. Particularly well-versed in the practical sciences, a work-experience program at the local spaceport resulted in a part-time job patching micrometeoroid holes in the hulls of shuttles. Still; however, she chafed at the confines of a planet-bound life. When a spate of high-profile kidnappings prompted Manhattan's wealthy to pull their family ever closer, Sarah pushed against the boundaries that she felt settling over her life, and that of her newborn little brother. Where others feared the unknown, Sarah craved it and, ultimately, the romance of a life of piracy was too great for her to deny.
Shortly after midnight, a month after Sarah's sixteenth birthday, the CSV Mundane Intervention lifted off from the pad at Normanton Spaceport. The owner, a man who would later be identified in LPI reports as a Junker by the name of Jack King, was found dead in a swamp two weeks later and two hundred kilometres from Lenox Hill, another apparent casualty of Manhattan's underground drug trade. Half a star system away, Sarah had set out to find the Rogues, oblivious to the army of private investigators that had their names etched on Johnathon McFarlen's payroll. Like so many before them, they found nothing.
Ultimately, it was the Rogues who found Sarah, a failed shield capacitor and misjudged attitude adjustment sending her stolen CSV careening into one of the asteroids that dotted the Badlands. She was unconscious by the time the Hyenas found her, carrying her back to the cold rock of Buffalo base in a Bactrian's cargo bay. In the end, it was the skills she'd learnt in Manhattan's spaceport that saved her from a life under Malta's yellow sun, and she was put to work repairing and retrofitting the rag-tag fleet that carried the pirates to the tradelanes and hauled their takings back again.
Wealth offered tremendous power; however, and even the Badlands fell within the reach of those with the credits. Aigis, an artificial intelligence hired with her father's money eventually found Sarah and machine and mechanic struck up a friendship, of sorts, that would outlast Sarah's stay in the Rogues. For reasons known only to artificial mind, it chose not to reveal Sarah's location and, as the years passed, her file slowly slid from the LPI's missing persons watch. Under the watchful (and semi-invisible) eyes of Christopher Dangen and Aigis, Sarah escaped major harm in those early years among the Rogues, eventually, in the chaos that followed Warlord Ashes' departure, rising to become the Rogue's chief mechanic and what might, to the socialites on Manhattan, have been referred to as senior management, but to the Rogues was toasted over half-drunk ales as an Underboss.
Quickly forced on by more ruthless members of the Rogues, Sarah's stay as Underboss was brief, but hectic. Almost single-handedly responsible for returning the pirate capital fleet to operational status when a series of errors grounded the Rogue flagships, Sarah's work tightened the Rogue strangehold on piracy in central Liberty and all but ensured a brief dominance of smuggling routes in the core worlds. When Sarah left the Rogues, it was like leaving a second family. Leave them she did, though.
Professing to be sick of piracy, and saddled with the weariness of a woman three times her age, Sarah left known Sirius for a time, signing aboard as drive engineer with the Zoner exploration vessel Star's Soliloquy. With her passion for the unknown reignited, Sarah took up an interest in the alien artifacts that littered the Edge Worlds, finally returning to known space in 819A.S. Turning to old allies in the Rogues for assistance, she acquired and began outfitting the former prison liner McCreary, rechristened Contents May Differ, intending to use the vessel as a staging point for an expedition into the so-called 'Nomad Systems.' Well and truly dry of any credits earned from her sojourn aboard Soliloquy she worked briefly as a Freelancer, taking jobs where they came to finance the continued work on Contents.
Plans for the expedition came to a grinding halt in late 820A.S, when a trip through Bremen drew the attention of the Rheinland Military. Loaded with artifacts, and straying dangerously close to an unknown military facility, the liner's hull quickly buckled beneath the resulting onslaught of fire. Sarah, loathe to see Contents in the hands of the military, plotted the dying ship on a course for Bremen's sun before flicking the release switch on her escape pod. Contents May Differ died in the glow of a planet-sized fusion reaction, a fate Sarah was lucky to escape. The pod drifted through space for a day, tiny thrusters carrying it to the only significant mass within range - an oversized asteroid that its Bundschuh party inhabitants called Cloppenburg.
With nowhere else to go, and her own plans burning in a nuclear furnace, Sarah directed her efforts toward assisting her new hosts. For perhaps the first time in her life Sarah had the opportunity for true altruism and, after nearly a decade of self-interest, clutched to it like a dying man to a raft. Sarah, going under the pseudonym 'Sparks,' carved out a rough existence among the idealists, opportunists, and self-confessed patriots of Erich Klugmann's Widerstand. Surviving on technology that others would have stripped for scrap, 'Sparks' found a niche maintaining the ancient communications satellites and installations that kept the Widerstand hidden from the sleepless eyes of the military. It wasn't to last.
In early 821 government satellites located a Widerstand task force, escorted by the Natio Octavarium battleship Metropolis, orbiting alongside Zwickau Depot. The military response was as swift as it was brutal. Dead and dying ships lit Dresden's skies as tugs laboured with flickering thrusters to tow Zwickau to a safer orbit. The station survived, but at tremendous cost. Sparks was dispatched with damage control teams working desperately to seal wounds in man and machine alike. Only in the aftermath of the disaster did the true scale of the loss become apparent. Dozens of revolutionaries were never found, crushed in failing passageways or lost to the void, ships becoming coffins. An unfortunate engineering team were vaporised when a plasma bolt ripped through a hangar door. Defeated on their home soil, the Widerstand suffered a tremendous blow to their manpower, materials and morale that was only exacerbated when the sect's leader failed to return from a routine patrol.
Bruised and bloodied, the remnants of the Widerstand put up a cry for vengeance, and the movement began a slow slide towards the militarism of their predecessor, the Volksfront. Under the command of former Volksfront Oberst Freya Eistochter a series of increasingly ruthless policies inched in to Sparks' day-to-day existence. Matters came to a head when Christopher Dangen, going under the alias of Vaelin, threatened Bruchsal Base in response to veiled threats to Sparks. Sparks was promptly exiled to ensure the safety of the increasingly-radical Widerstand.
As 822A.S rolled by Sparks once again found herself facing the universe alone.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
The Alcatraz Depot Lounge and Pub - Watering Hole - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Others.
Shortly after her induction into the Rogues, Sarah drops by a popular bar to absorb the atmosphere.
Ta' the rest of the Junkers - Communication - Complete Matthew Habrum, Jack Crow
Following the death of a Junker aboard Rochester, Sarah is barred from Junker facilities.
In The Grand Scheme Of Things - Story - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Artemis Sworn
After the events of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Sarah answers the summons of a Lane Hacker.
Liberty-Wide Transmission - Communication - Complete Johnathon McFarlen
A blind transmission from Johnathon to his wayward daughter.
Whispers in the Night - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen
Following a mind-wrenching encounter with a nomad, Sarah's visions of the Omicrons are not entirely her own.
To: Jeff Anderson - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Jeff Anderson
Every teenager has romance problems. Sarah's just happen to involve murderous gangs of mercenaries.
Liberty Rogue Recruitment - Recruitment - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Others. |#1|#2|#3|#4|
To: The Liberty Authorities - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Sergeant Dusentrieb
Fear of the BDM playing on her mind, Sarah appeals for and, thanks to the unexpected mercy of an LPI officer, is granted the chance to start again.
Flying Free - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen
Sarah leaves the Rogues behind to seek a new life in the Border Worlds, far from the houses of Sirius.
818-819A.S - The Explorer To: All Zoner Stations - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Vorandril
Sarah lends a fellow Zoner a hand, and earns a dinner into the bargin.
To: Captain Vorandril - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Vorandril
Keeping up a longstanding tradition of abusing favors, Sarah calls in some debts. Continued on Canaria.
To: Sarah McFarlen - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Jacob Blunt
The funny thing about favors is that they work both ways.
Owing Favors - Story - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Jacob Blunt
The ex-rogue rushes to save a former naval commander.
Breaking the McCreary - Event - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Others.
Sarah's plan grinds into motion, ending with the destruction of the LPI escorts, and an empty prison liner.
Pirate Pilots Plunder Prison - News Release - Complete Timothy Harvard
The theft of McCreary manages to draw the attention of Liberty's media.
To: Station Owners - Sirius Wide - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Jay Gats, Templar
With her liner now in hand, Sarah searches for somewhere to lie low while she makes repairs, finally accepting an offer from the Temporary Autonomous Zoners.
To: Sarah McFarlen - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Clyde Johnson
Clyde calls to check in on Sarah's latest acquisition.
To: Jeremy Hunter - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Jeremy Hunter
Seeking a guide for her Edge Worlds expedition, Sarah calls the only nomad war veteran she can still contact.
To: People of Sirius == From: Ordo Malleus - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Others.
Irritated at the latest gang of warmongers to stomp through the Omicrons, Sarah speaks up.
To: Katherine Pennybrooke - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Katherine Pennybrooke
United in their opposition of the so-called Ordo Malleus, Sarah reunites with an old acquaintance.
To: Rheinland Junkers - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Robert Lang
Seeking parts to patch the Widerstand's limping fleet, Sarah puts out feelers to the local Junkers.
One Year Closer - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Erich Klugmann
As she spends her first New Year's aboard a Widerstand base, Sarah's mind drifts to thoughts of home.
Combat Craft of the Widerstand - Database - Complete Sarah McFarlen
Slowly coming to understand the Bunschuh's way of doing things, Sarah assembles a database of their combat capable craft.
To: Erich Klugmann - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Erich Klugmann
Sarah seeks, and receives, both permission to travel to Liberty and to contact the Junkers for additional replacement parts.
To: Erica Hartman - Communication - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Erica Hartman
Hesitant to trust the Junkers, Sarah turns to a sympathetic member of the ALG as an alternative method of securing ex-military weapons.
To: The Lane Hackers - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Nicole Hunter
When her efforts to secure a military transponder code in Rheinland fail, Sarah turns to the one group she knows can provide it.
The Portside Embassy - Watering Hole - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Michael Hermann, Freya Eistochter
Sarah's attempts to install a set of projectors in the Widerstand's favorite bar end, as such things inevitably do, horribly.
To the VWA - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Robin Cornell
The VWA is contacted to restore an old, ex-military bomber to serviceable conditions. Sarah, of course, volunteers.
To: Clyde Johnson - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Clyde Johnson
Sarah renews old contacts in preparation for her trip to Liberty.
To: The Sirius Coalition's Revolutionary Army - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Joseph Garcia
When her attempts to disassemble the Coalition fighters stationed on Bruchsal Base end poorly, Sarah contacts the shadow-state for help.
To: Natio Octavarium Civil Response - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Harold Kane
After intercepting a slaver ship in Pennslyvania, Sarah's faced with the difficulty of what to do with four hundred starving people.
To: VWA - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Shiranui
In the wake of the Zwickau massacre, weapons flow freely between the Widerstand and the Vagrant Raiders thanks, in no small part, to Sarah giving them the keys.
To: VWA - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Kronos
Sarah answers a second weapons request.
To: Sparks - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Harold Kane
Badly damaged during the defense of Zwickau, Sarah offers what help she can to the crew of the Vagrant Raider flagship, Metropolis.
To: VWA Pilots, VR Pilots, Zwickau Depot - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Kelly Combs
With Erich Klugmann in attendance, a Vagrant Raider bomber squad manage to destroy the station that had been the original target of the forces stationed at Zwickau. Sarah traces down the news after the fact.
To: "Sparks" - Communication - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Erich Klugmann
When Sarah's latest attempt to automate the Widerstand's trade fleet results in the near-death of three pilots, the revolutionary commander is less then pleased.
Aftermath - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Alexander Fuchs, Axel Eichel
With Zwickau screaming for supplies and her fellow activists lying in the hospital beds her actions put them in, Sarah is left to pick up the pieces as best she can.
To: Sarah - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Axel Eichel
An unexpected message arrives on Sarah's datapad.
To: JM|-Innocent.Bystander - Communication - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Grand Marauder
When a deal with the Lane Hackers falls through, Sarah turns to the Marauders to supply the parts she needs.
To: Alexander Fuchs - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Alexander Fuchs
With Metropolis' departure imminent, Sarah sends an alert to her fellow passenger.
Deus Ex Machina - Story - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Alexander Fuchs, Harold Kane
Preparations complete, Sarah boards the most advanced ship in the Vagrant Raider's fleet, bound for Liberty.
To Sparks from Wolf - Communication - Abandoned Sarah's Answering Machine, Wolfgang Weber
A former military Captain tries to make contact with Sarah. Unfortunately, she's several star systems away.
All My Sins Remembered - Story - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Alexander Fuchs
Barrier Gate; a center for free trade and free pilots alike and, perhaps, a hub for something much darker. When Sarah and Alex arrive, old scars resurface with them.
To: Red Hessians CC: Friends and Allies - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Gotthold Ludewig, Others
When the Hessians and their allies gather for an attack on a corporate station, Sarah pledges the backing of the Widerstand's forces.
To: VWA - Communication - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen, Kapitan Katyusha
Beware Coalitioners bearing gifts.
To: Gotthold Ludewig - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Gotthold Ludewig
Following up on a deal struck with the Junker Marauders, Sarah attempts to secure the hulk of a Hel cruiser.
To: The Vagrant Raiders - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Kelly Combs
When the Hessians turn down her request, Sarah turns to her allies in the Vagrant Raiders to retrieve the plans - only to meet with the same response.
To: The Junker Marauders - Communication - Abandoned Sarah McFarlen
Sarah reports her failure to the Marauders.
Dear Sparks - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Robin Cornell
When Robin turns herself in to Liberty's authorities, Sarah takes custody of her ship.
To: The VWA - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Tanken
The Blood Dragons extend greetings - and a warning - to their old allies.
The Jackal and the Wolf - Story - Complete Sparks, Vaelin Darklight
An old friend reappears in Sparks' life, and is dragged into the political machinations of the Widerstand.
7th June 822 Nostalgia for Infinity - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Leslie Durant
Sparks meets Leslie Durant, the captain of Adventure Galley and her new employer. For the first time in two years, Sparks goes by her real name.
16th June 822 The Bottom Line - Story - In Progress Sarah McFarlen, Leslie Durant, Peterson, Clarke
Suits and flightsuits clash when Leslie and Sarah meet two Bowex managers.
21st June 822 To: Lisa Jaeger - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Lisa Jaeger
Concerned with an increase in traffic on the Widerstand's communications network, Sarah calls in help to find the cause.
30th June 822 Dubious Company - Story - Complete Sarah McFarlen, Leslie Durant, Sakuma Hitomi
Leslie, Sarah, and an Admiral of the exiled Kusari Navy hit Barrier Gate after a long flight.
1st July 822 To: James Arland - Communication - Complete Sarah McFarlen, James Arland
After tracing a handful of strange transmissions in the Barrier back to a lost pre-jumpgate slowboat, Sarah turns to James Arland for help securing it.
5th June - 10th August 822 Derelict - Story - In Progress Sarah McFarlen, Leslie Durant, James Arland
With the help of James Arland, Leslie and Sarah set course for the remains of the derelict Chardon, and find far more than they bargained for.
Note: The information in some of these threads is rather old, and some of it was written before I finalized Sarah's character concept. So, anywhere descriptions or ages conflict, go with the description on the character sheet.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
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