[- OOC Information -]
Name: Catherine
Do you play any other characters in Outer Divide? Nope
[- Character Information -]
Character Name: Seamus Zelazny Harper
Fandom: Andromeda
AU or OU: OU
Canon Point: At the end of series four
Journal: deusexmechanic
Icon: Dis one!Appearance: The most immediately obvious thing about Seamus Harper (setting aside the abrasive personality, that is) is that compared to every single other character in his Canon, he's... well, kind of tiny. He's five foot five, stocky, and has a head full of blonde hair which is permanently spiked up. On his neck, just beneath one ear, he has a Cerebral Port embedded into his neck. This looks like a silver, metallic disk, with an opening in the center of it.
He has a tendency to wear hideous Hawaiian shirts, tribal print tee shirts, and Cargo pants. Fashion is not his friend.
History: A link to a wiki or other outside source is acceptable. If no link is available please provide a brief over view of important events in the character's life.
Previous Game History: If you're apping previous game history please detail it here. Note any major events and changes in the character. You don't have to list all their CR but please mention everyone who played a major role in their life there.
Personality: It’s impossible to talk about Seamus Harpers personality, without talking about where he comes from.
Earth did not fare well after the Fall of the Commonwealth. The utopian governing force which had held together peace and order in the known universe fell in an intergalactic war three hundred years before Harper was even born. After the war, earth had first been overthrown by a brutal tribe of the genetically enhanced Niezchien race, who enslaved, oppressed, and tortured the inhabitants, before playing host to the numerous invasions of a swarm of parasitic aliens known as the Magog, who swept across the planet consuming and laying their eggs within the inhabitants.
This was the world which Seamus Harper was born into, and while it might not be immediately obvious from his hyperactive and irreverent demeanor, the effects of growing up in a world that demanded the suspension of morality in the name of survival stay with him throughout his life.
A self proclaimed genius, it’s likely that Harper's intelligence was his key to escaping from his home planet, we see in flashbacks that when he first begins working with Beka (his long time captain) he is hired straight off earth by a boyfriend of her's for general grunt work, but it was Harper’s self taught ability with engines which convinced Beka to keep him on. This is likely a key contributor to his nigh megalomaniacal self praise when it comes to his abilities. He may be a short, scrawny, genetically inferior and deeply irritating life form who never gets laid despite his best efforts, but he’s smart. Hell, he’s really smart. He’s so smart that he single handedly thought his way into adulthood on one of the most hostile planets in the universe, then he thought his way off it, he thought his way across the galaxy and thought his way into the engine room of the biggest, baddest warship of the last three hundred years, and he definitely likes to make sure everyone knows about it. His need to constantly emphasize and brag about his intelligence is probably linked to a certain need to overcompensate for his physical weakness and the assumptions that are naturally made about people born on earth.
It is commented during the series that Harper follows the twin muses of Chaos and Caffeine, and it’s true that if you catch him on a good day then it’s likely that the overriding impression you’ll receive will be one of a small hyperactive boy with an incredibly short attention span and a bit of a god complex. He’s just one of those people whose mind moves so fast that it’s impossible for his body or just about anyone else’s to keep up, and while his behaviour and moods might make perfect sense to him, without the good fortune of being able to see the thought processes behind his motivations? The outcomes certainly suggest a chaotic line of thinking.
Harper also shows a hedonistic streak and a serious lack of impulse control. As early as the first episode he’s talking about spending his cut of a big score on going to the sci-fi equivalent of an extremely high class brothel, and throughout every series he proves himself to be flirtatious and lecherous when it comes to members of the fairer sex. He subsists off a constant flow of beer and cola while working, and has occasionally shown his passion for his work and his desire for recognition to override all other considerations of common sense, loyalty, fear, and reason.
Despite mainly coming across as fairly well intentioned, Harper has a definite nasty side to him, his deep seated hatred of Niezchiens and Magog is something he never grows out of, and he expresses several times that he would ultimately be content with the eradication of both races. At one point he even attempts to re-write history by killing potentially hundreds of thousands of Niezchiens before a critically important battle. When confronted by the reality and consequences of his actions, he does show a certain regret for what he’s done, not wanting to talk or think about the damage caused. However in the hours building up to it, the possibility of feeling anything but victorious afterward never seems to even occur to him. He also shows zero respect for the internal workings of the ships AI, Andromeda, despite clearly viewing her as an independent sentient being, he’s perfectly happy to hack into her and play with, block, unleash, and re-write her memory bank and internal workings. This happens multiple times across the series and while she is always deeply offended by it and he is always apologetic? That never seems to stop him from doing it again the next time.
Over the first four series Harper does grow more noble in some ways, more hesitant to immediately seek vengeance for various slights, and more prone towards self sacrifice than he is in early series, however, by the beginning of series five this has all been undone. In the conclusion of the last episode of series four, the crew are scattered across a technologically backwards planet in a distant galaxy, and while most of them are only there for a few weeks or months before Dylan begins to reunite them, due to a temporal flux, Harper is stranded there for three years there before anyone else arrives. By the time Dylan finds him he’s been trying to re-build Andromeda’s consciousness and memories for years, with little success. He’s working on growing the perfect species for an evil geneticist who’s lacking in any real talent, and mainly achieving deformed and unintelligent mutations in his attempts. He does however seem to view them with the a deep rooted affection, and is happy to endanger the remainder of the galaxy to try and protect them. At this point Harper appears to have regressed to the same kind of morality which he lived by on earth, in which he protects himself and his family and doesn’t care about anything else. When one of his former crewmates suggests that because he was stranded alone he started stealing, Harper responds that he started stealing when he was five, so that was nothing new, apparently supporting this theory.
In terms of interpersonal relations, Harper manages to connect with a broad variety of people despite his obnoxious and annoying tendencies. Arguably his closest friend in the series, and probably the one whom he shows the most respect for is Beka Valentine, who captains the ship he served on since his escape from Earth. Despite his lecherous tendencies, Harper clearly has no problem with serving under a female commander, and indeed seems to be more inclined towards doing what she tells him too than doing what his latter Captain, Dylan Hunt tells him. Probably the most meaningful relationship we see Harper in over the course of the series, is the one he has with the ship itself, while his true motives for how he feels towards Andromeda are never fully explored, he says several times across the series that he loves her or is in love with her, although the exact degree to which Andromeda returns the feelings beyond a platonic level is unclear, as either way it’s clearly impossible for her to return his affections, it is likely something she’s never had cause to entertain. On Harpers part the feelings seem to be largely rooted in his role as “her” engineer, and a level of intimacy that comes from devoting himself so intently towards keeping her running. Although there was also an obvious and immediate attraction to the ship before he was officially her engineer, and as has been already mentioned, he’s quite verbal about his attraction to the women he comes across, so it seems unlikely that he’s incapable of falling in love with women who aren’t star ships.
Harpers relationships with men tend to be more antagonistic than the ones he has with women (There’s considerably less flirting, although throw away lines like describing Dylan as: “A greek god” still sneak in? Harper is more verbal about how taken he is with women.), although this could in part be due to the fact that three out of the four relationships with men that we see Harper develop across the course of the series are with Magog and Nietzchiens. Harper develops a close friendship with Nietzchien Tyr Anasazi over the first three series of Andromeda, and while in the forefront of his mind, Harper never actually confesses to liking or trusting Tyr, he shows an increasing amount of affection for the other man, going so far as to hug him tightly when he and Beka return from several weeks lost in space. When Try eventually does betray them, and Harper gets a chance to speak to him again, he asks Tyr what he’d ever done to him to deserve the betrayal, making it clear that he wasn’t prepared to shrug the act off as just being the rational thing to do, or an act against the crew at large, not only was it personal? But it was also clearly about him.
Powers/Abilities: List any major powers or abilities. Their limits and weaknesses.
Possessions: What are they bringing with them? Keep in mind they can only bring in what was in their possession at the moment they where taken.
Arrival: Harper will wake up on the ship!
Reason for Playing: Harper is one of my all time favorite characters, and while I've played him extensively in the past, but I'm really excited about the prospect of putting him into an old school sci-fi game. He's a character who was born and raised in a crapsack universe, and I think he'd be pretty much perfectly suited to the setting.
[- Writing Samples -]
First person: Six or seven sentences. This is to give us an idea of how they sound. You may also link an existing thread that is at least eight comments long. It must be of the version of the character you intend to play in the game.
Third person: (200 words) This can be anything you like. Their life back home. Their reaction to the game's world. Something that gives us an idea of how they act. You can link an existing thread but it must be the version of the character you intend to play.
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