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Jul. 10th, 2013 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nooniensingh[nick / name]: Lis
[personal LJ/DW name]:lisandra
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: couervider@gmail.com
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lisandraface
[series]: Star Trek Reboot
[character]: Khan Noonien Singh AKA John Harrison
[character history / background]: Khan was born, yes, but his birth was carefully constructed, and he was brought to term in a host-mother's womb. He was made to be better, better than human, with enhanced reflexes and unmatched intelligence. There were those that argued that this actually made him less than human, and perhaps they were right. His date of birth was somewhere in the early 1970's. By the age of twenty, he became absolute ruler of one half of the world's population, for close to five years. It took a nuclear war to depose him. He was one of several dozen so-called Augments, made by the clandestine Chrysalis Lab. These remarkable children went on to totally change the world, and not for the better.
Khan became known as "the best of the tyrants." His ambition was overpowering, but he also did a surprising amount of good for a population that was suffering. He built infrastructure, distributed food and clothing to the needy, drained swamps, organized entire societies, and tolerated no weakness or failure. Unfortunately, along with all of this "good," he also was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, some of them at his own hands. The other Augments could not match his brutality, though they tried.
The world was on the verge of interstellar travel at that time, and the war both accelerated and retarded those efforts in several ways. One of the many ships being constructed at the time was an inter-galactic transport, with the assembled crew to travel in cryostasis...
After the Eugenics War ended, he and seventy two other Augments managed to escape on a newly commissioned starship, the Botany Bay. Khan was the leader, and the others were his followers, his army, his family. They then spent two centuries frozen and asleep, drifting through the stars. His plan was to find a new planet, a new place to re-start their society.
This is where the timeline diverged. In the original series, Khan was awakened by James T. Kirk, along with all the other Augments, and aided by Lt. Marla McGivers. (See the ST:OS episode Space Seed, and the movie Wrath of Khan.) But Into Darkness went another way.
Khan's ship was discovered, instead, by one Admiral Marcus. Marcus knew his history, and knew that Khan was just bloodthirsty enough to start a war, if nudged in the right direction. The stated purpose of his revival was weapons development, but the real reason Khan was awakened was to attempt to take over Starfleet and the Federation. Admiral Marcus would have his Klingon war, and be firmly in control of the government by the end. The other Augments were kept as hostages to keep Khan in line. At first, it seemingly worked. But then Khan began to plot his escape...and his vengeance.
[character abilities]: Khan has the following abilities:
Preternatural Intelligence - Khan's IQ is in the 200+ range, deliberately manufactured to be so. He will make causal connections quicker, memorize facts faster, and he has observational skills above and beyond the norm.
Enhanced Eyesight and Hearing - Khan can see in the ultraviolet, and is tetrachromatic. His hearing range begins at 7 Hz and hits its peak at 29 Hz. (For comparison's sake, the average human's range is 12 to 20 Hz). He is capable of hearing a 15 decibel whisper from fifty meters away, and can withstand 125+ decibel noises without pain.
Enhanced Reflexes and Increased Lung Capacity - Khan is faster than the average human, and more dextrous as well. His muscle mass is leaner, and his bone structure is denser, giving him more pressure per pound of force. He is also capable of falling great heights without suffering more than superficial damage as a result of this. He can hold his breath longer than average, and his oxygen exchange is more efficient.
Accelerated Healing Time - Khan can be injured, but when he is his immune system goes into overdrive, allowing him to heal much faster than normal. He is immune to most illnesses and viruses.
[character personality]: Khan is...complicated. To put it mildly.
From his history, it's made clear that he was raised to be above and beyond humanity. The stated purpose of the Chrysalis Lab was to make people who could lead the world out of devastation and destruction. Khan's mother, Sarina Kaur, leader and visionary of the Chrysalis Project, believed that she had to be "like mother nature" - cruel and unyielding to failure. That weak genes led to a weak race, and that survival of the fittest was the only moral absolute.
Raising a child in this philosophy is absolutely certain to twist the kid's mind beyond repair. That Khan didn't end up worse than he did is nothing short of a miracle. The other Augments showed this cruelty, this disregard for human life. Khan had just enough humanity left in him to make him occasionally kind. Manipulative, but kind. His saving of the little girl at the beginning of the movie, only to use that to force her father into blowing up half of London...that's the sort of "manipulative/kind" he's capable of.
He is more than capable of human feelings, he just discards them when they don't serve his purpose. He's a master of manipulation, capable of turning all positive emotions around on other people. He functions primarily on cool logic, right up until he doesn't anymore. He's not a Vulcan, after all. He will descend into pure, blinding fits of murderous rage when sufficiently roused. He's also capable of feeling a type of love, in a way. Of course, the love is entirely self-serving in the end, and he would abandon the object of his love should it interfere with his goals. His crying over his "family" held hostage by the Federation is proof of that. (Of course, he was also manipulating Kirk but hey.)
His overarching goal is to once again take over the planet. He genuinely believes that he's the only one capable of it, that humanity under Starfleet is a giant mistake. It's a case of curing the patient by killing them, really. He believes the Federation is diseased all through, that his is the only global government possible, and that humanity is lying to itself when it claims to believe in altruism and compassion. He sees himself as genuinely better than the bleating sheep of humanity, all too content to follow a shepherd. If the shepherd is all too keen on sheering the flock, well...
He is a man driven by vengeance, and by pure need for power. He's arrogant, but in a way that seems to make it...beside the point. He's entitled to his arrogance, by way of his clear superiority, both physical and mental. He takes great pride in his very self, the blood and bone of himself. He considers his body a literal temple. He will not overindulge in food, or sex, or other base physical needs. He'll enjoy them, certainly. But he's not a sybarite, and he's not a glutton. Due to his enhanced biology, he does not need to diet or exercise to maintain peak physical condition. He does so anyway, driven again by the arrogance. Why be good when he could be great? It's this mind-set that caused him to learn hand-to-hand combat, gunnery, fencing, and other forms of personal fighting.
In his "down time" when he's not trying to enslave all of creation to toil under his not-so-benevolent thumb, he likes to read. He'll read anything and everything he can get his hands on, his eidetic memory capturing it all. He never needs to re-read a book, or a scientific report. (This is attributed to the fact that he was awoken 200 years after his birth, and was seemingly able to process and then use and then improve technology very far beyond his time. Beaming himself to Qo'noS using stolen trans-warp technology, improved photon torpedoes, being able to single-handedly pilot a Dreadnaught class star ship, etc. None of these things existed in 1996, and he couldn't have had more than two years to learn it all.) This is his main form of recreation, and considers the written word to be one of the only sacred things that humanity has produced.
His overall attitude toward humanity is one of strange and sickening contradiction. On the one hand, he thinks of himself as the only one capable of ruling humanity, and has a strange reverence for its works. (The desire to rule is the desire to own, and to desire to own is to grant something an inherent value...) However, he has nothing but seeming contempt for the "lesser" beings he's destined to rule over, and sees no great moral wrong in killing off individuals who get in his way. He sees no great moral wrong in holding these contradictory viewpoints, either, taking it all as a given, that all "right-minded" people would think this way. He is capable of changing his mind when given facts, but will then twist those facts to suit his self-aggrandizing agenda. Khan sees himself as the wronged party in every conflict, driving him to crush anybody who wrongs him. This is why he's gunning for Admiral Marcus, and why he ends up getting Kirk (and by extension the entire crew of the Enterprise) in his sights as well. For Khan, every slight, every stepping stone, every road block against him, is personal. For is he not designed to be the pinnacle of creation? His brilliance allows him to think steps and steps beyond his enemies, predicting their human failures all too easily.
He's not the kind of person who will announce his intentions immediately, or outright. He'll lie, evade, manipulate, pull at loose threads, all to get whatever he wants. If he tries to gain your friendship, look out, because all it means is he's looking for a weak spot to stick a proverbial - or literal - knife. That being said, he is capable of immense, vast loyalty, but only to those who have shown him loyalty first. He can be as protective as a doberman...a rabid doberman. One never can quite tell when the dog will turn, and bite. Which, again, won't happen right away. He might forgive some grand fuck-up, and then prosecute the slightest mistake.
And his methods of punishment, well...
One can only hope it won't be Ceti eels.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Mid-movie, approximately just after his arrest on Qo'noS.
[journal post]: ((This is intended to be his first post upon arriving in the City. It is to be taken as having thoroughly read past posts, knowing precisely what's going on, and then lying to everyone on the network.))
"I find myself a stranger in a strange land. My name is John Harrison, a traveler brought here by...error. I have only just landed this morning, and I'm more than a little wrong-footed. Is it true that there is no escape from this City? Is it true that there's no end to the incessant ticking? This metronome counting the seconds can't be silenced?
"Are there any out here listening to my words, is the real question. I have lightly browsed back through the archives presented here, but cannot seem to make sense of them, honestly. 'Sound and fury, signifying nothing.'
"There's a charming line in a play by Tennessee Williams; 'I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.' A general policy that can lead to problems, to be certain. I can only hope that my reliance isn't misplaced. Please answer here, any format you deem necessary. I prefer to stick to voice sampling, if it's all the same to you."
[third person / log sample]:
The inconsequential facts buffeted his mind, all slotting neatly into place as he fell. He instantly calculated his speed, his angle relative to the ground, the Mohs scale of the concrete, air resistance. It was done in a milisecond, and he was barely conscious of it happening. He adjusted his body in the most minute way, tensing certain muscles and relaxing others.
Impact. He felt the judder travel up his shins, as his ankles and knees absorbed and softened the blow. Vibrations - just barely not painful - traveled up his hips, his spine, the back of his head. A forty meter fall was something not even he could easily shrug off. But he was intact, and the concrete below him was not. And that was how Khan survived. He remained intact, nothing else did. Just as he was designed to do.
He couldn't help the small trill of smugness that curled his lip up in one corner, as he glanced back up over his shoulder. The Vengeance was a twisted ruin in amongst the wreckage of Starfleet. The aptly named ship had done its job. Amazingly, he also felt a brief twinge of regret; San Francisco had been a beautiful city, once. Before Starfleet had covered it with its spoor, the fungus spreading across the bay and destroying its individuality.
There was no time to wallow in emotions, however. He straightened, and began to run. Kirk and Spock were certain to be tracking him from the Enterprise. The sooner he could lose his bio-signature in amongst the survivors of the crash, the better. He had no intention of surrender, of defeat, not now. His bones, his very matter, creaked against the abuse he'd heaped on himself in the last forty-eight hours. Even an Übermensche could feel pain. But the difference was, he didn't allow pain to stop him.
Fleeing into the chaos of the ruined city, Khan's next goal was a simple one: revenge. That damned Vulcan would pay for the blatant murder of his friends, his family. It might take years, decades, but Khan had the patience to wait.
It was a dish best served cold, after all. As Marcus had discovered...
[personal LJ/DW name]:
lisandra[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: couervider@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]:
[series]: Star Trek Reboot
[character]: Khan Noonien Singh AKA John Harrison
[character history / background]: Khan was born, yes, but his birth was carefully constructed, and he was brought to term in a host-mother's womb. He was made to be better, better than human, with enhanced reflexes and unmatched intelligence. There were those that argued that this actually made him less than human, and perhaps they were right. His date of birth was somewhere in the early 1970's. By the age of twenty, he became absolute ruler of one half of the world's population, for close to five years. It took a nuclear war to depose him. He was one of several dozen so-called Augments, made by the clandestine Chrysalis Lab. These remarkable children went on to totally change the world, and not for the better.
Khan became known as "the best of the tyrants." His ambition was overpowering, but he also did a surprising amount of good for a population that was suffering. He built infrastructure, distributed food and clothing to the needy, drained swamps, organized entire societies, and tolerated no weakness or failure. Unfortunately, along with all of this "good," he also was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, some of them at his own hands. The other Augments could not match his brutality, though they tried.
The world was on the verge of interstellar travel at that time, and the war both accelerated and retarded those efforts in several ways. One of the many ships being constructed at the time was an inter-galactic transport, with the assembled crew to travel in cryostasis...
After the Eugenics War ended, he and seventy two other Augments managed to escape on a newly commissioned starship, the Botany Bay. Khan was the leader, and the others were his followers, his army, his family. They then spent two centuries frozen and asleep, drifting through the stars. His plan was to find a new planet, a new place to re-start their society.
This is where the timeline diverged. In the original series, Khan was awakened by James T. Kirk, along with all the other Augments, and aided by Lt. Marla McGivers. (See the ST:OS episode Space Seed, and the movie Wrath of Khan.) But Into Darkness went another way.
Khan's ship was discovered, instead, by one Admiral Marcus. Marcus knew his history, and knew that Khan was just bloodthirsty enough to start a war, if nudged in the right direction. The stated purpose of his revival was weapons development, but the real reason Khan was awakened was to attempt to take over Starfleet and the Federation. Admiral Marcus would have his Klingon war, and be firmly in control of the government by the end. The other Augments were kept as hostages to keep Khan in line. At first, it seemingly worked. But then Khan began to plot his escape...and his vengeance.
[character abilities]: Khan has the following abilities:
Preternatural Intelligence - Khan's IQ is in the 200+ range, deliberately manufactured to be so. He will make causal connections quicker, memorize facts faster, and he has observational skills above and beyond the norm.
Enhanced Eyesight and Hearing - Khan can see in the ultraviolet, and is tetrachromatic. His hearing range begins at 7 Hz and hits its peak at 29 Hz. (For comparison's sake, the average human's range is 12 to 20 Hz). He is capable of hearing a 15 decibel whisper from fifty meters away, and can withstand 125+ decibel noises without pain.
Enhanced Reflexes and Increased Lung Capacity - Khan is faster than the average human, and more dextrous as well. His muscle mass is leaner, and his bone structure is denser, giving him more pressure per pound of force. He is also capable of falling great heights without suffering more than superficial damage as a result of this. He can hold his breath longer than average, and his oxygen exchange is more efficient.
Accelerated Healing Time - Khan can be injured, but when he is his immune system goes into overdrive, allowing him to heal much faster than normal. He is immune to most illnesses and viruses.
[character personality]: Khan is...complicated. To put it mildly.
From his history, it's made clear that he was raised to be above and beyond humanity. The stated purpose of the Chrysalis Lab was to make people who could lead the world out of devastation and destruction. Khan's mother, Sarina Kaur, leader and visionary of the Chrysalis Project, believed that she had to be "like mother nature" - cruel and unyielding to failure. That weak genes led to a weak race, and that survival of the fittest was the only moral absolute.
Raising a child in this philosophy is absolutely certain to twist the kid's mind beyond repair. That Khan didn't end up worse than he did is nothing short of a miracle. The other Augments showed this cruelty, this disregard for human life. Khan had just enough humanity left in him to make him occasionally kind. Manipulative, but kind. His saving of the little girl at the beginning of the movie, only to use that to force her father into blowing up half of London...that's the sort of "manipulative/kind" he's capable of.
He is more than capable of human feelings, he just discards them when they don't serve his purpose. He's a master of manipulation, capable of turning all positive emotions around on other people. He functions primarily on cool logic, right up until he doesn't anymore. He's not a Vulcan, after all. He will descend into pure, blinding fits of murderous rage when sufficiently roused. He's also capable of feeling a type of love, in a way. Of course, the love is entirely self-serving in the end, and he would abandon the object of his love should it interfere with his goals. His crying over his "family" held hostage by the Federation is proof of that. (Of course, he was also manipulating Kirk but hey.)
His overarching goal is to once again take over the planet. He genuinely believes that he's the only one capable of it, that humanity under Starfleet is a giant mistake. It's a case of curing the patient by killing them, really. He believes the Federation is diseased all through, that his is the only global government possible, and that humanity is lying to itself when it claims to believe in altruism and compassion. He sees himself as genuinely better than the bleating sheep of humanity, all too content to follow a shepherd. If the shepherd is all too keen on sheering the flock, well...
He is a man driven by vengeance, and by pure need for power. He's arrogant, but in a way that seems to make it...beside the point. He's entitled to his arrogance, by way of his clear superiority, both physical and mental. He takes great pride in his very self, the blood and bone of himself. He considers his body a literal temple. He will not overindulge in food, or sex, or other base physical needs. He'll enjoy them, certainly. But he's not a sybarite, and he's not a glutton. Due to his enhanced biology, he does not need to diet or exercise to maintain peak physical condition. He does so anyway, driven again by the arrogance. Why be good when he could be great? It's this mind-set that caused him to learn hand-to-hand combat, gunnery, fencing, and other forms of personal fighting.
In his "down time" when he's not trying to enslave all of creation to toil under his not-so-benevolent thumb, he likes to read. He'll read anything and everything he can get his hands on, his eidetic memory capturing it all. He never needs to re-read a book, or a scientific report. (This is attributed to the fact that he was awoken 200 years after his birth, and was seemingly able to process and then use and then improve technology very far beyond his time. Beaming himself to Qo'noS using stolen trans-warp technology, improved photon torpedoes, being able to single-handedly pilot a Dreadnaught class star ship, etc. None of these things existed in 1996, and he couldn't have had more than two years to learn it all.) This is his main form of recreation, and considers the written word to be one of the only sacred things that humanity has produced.
His overall attitude toward humanity is one of strange and sickening contradiction. On the one hand, he thinks of himself as the only one capable of ruling humanity, and has a strange reverence for its works. (The desire to rule is the desire to own, and to desire to own is to grant something an inherent value...) However, he has nothing but seeming contempt for the "lesser" beings he's destined to rule over, and sees no great moral wrong in killing off individuals who get in his way. He sees no great moral wrong in holding these contradictory viewpoints, either, taking it all as a given, that all "right-minded" people would think this way. He is capable of changing his mind when given facts, but will then twist those facts to suit his self-aggrandizing agenda. Khan sees himself as the wronged party in every conflict, driving him to crush anybody who wrongs him. This is why he's gunning for Admiral Marcus, and why he ends up getting Kirk (and by extension the entire crew of the Enterprise) in his sights as well. For Khan, every slight, every stepping stone, every road block against him, is personal. For is he not designed to be the pinnacle of creation? His brilliance allows him to think steps and steps beyond his enemies, predicting their human failures all too easily.
He's not the kind of person who will announce his intentions immediately, or outright. He'll lie, evade, manipulate, pull at loose threads, all to get whatever he wants. If he tries to gain your friendship, look out, because all it means is he's looking for a weak spot to stick a proverbial - or literal - knife. That being said, he is capable of immense, vast loyalty, but only to those who have shown him loyalty first. He can be as protective as a doberman...a rabid doberman. One never can quite tell when the dog will turn, and bite. Which, again, won't happen right away. He might forgive some grand fuck-up, and then prosecute the slightest mistake.
And his methods of punishment, well...
One can only hope it won't be Ceti eels.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Mid-movie, approximately just after his arrest on Qo'noS.
[journal post]: ((This is intended to be his first post upon arriving in the City. It is to be taken as having thoroughly read past posts, knowing precisely what's going on, and then lying to everyone on the network.))
"I find myself a stranger in a strange land. My name is John Harrison, a traveler brought here by...error. I have only just landed this morning, and I'm more than a little wrong-footed. Is it true that there is no escape from this City? Is it true that there's no end to the incessant ticking? This metronome counting the seconds can't be silenced?
"Are there any out here listening to my words, is the real question. I have lightly browsed back through the archives presented here, but cannot seem to make sense of them, honestly. 'Sound and fury, signifying nothing.'
"There's a charming line in a play by Tennessee Williams; 'I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.' A general policy that can lead to problems, to be certain. I can only hope that my reliance isn't misplaced. Please answer here, any format you deem necessary. I prefer to stick to voice sampling, if it's all the same to you."
[third person / log sample]:
The inconsequential facts buffeted his mind, all slotting neatly into place as he fell. He instantly calculated his speed, his angle relative to the ground, the Mohs scale of the concrete, air resistance. It was done in a milisecond, and he was barely conscious of it happening. He adjusted his body in the most minute way, tensing certain muscles and relaxing others.
Impact. He felt the judder travel up his shins, as his ankles and knees absorbed and softened the blow. Vibrations - just barely not painful - traveled up his hips, his spine, the back of his head. A forty meter fall was something not even he could easily shrug off. But he was intact, and the concrete below him was not. And that was how Khan survived. He remained intact, nothing else did. Just as he was designed to do.
He couldn't help the small trill of smugness that curled his lip up in one corner, as he glanced back up over his shoulder. The Vengeance was a twisted ruin in amongst the wreckage of Starfleet. The aptly named ship had done its job. Amazingly, he also felt a brief twinge of regret; San Francisco had been a beautiful city, once. Before Starfleet had covered it with its spoor, the fungus spreading across the bay and destroying its individuality.
There was no time to wallow in emotions, however. He straightened, and began to run. Kirk and Spock were certain to be tracking him from the Enterprise. The sooner he could lose his bio-signature in amongst the survivors of the crash, the better. He had no intention of surrender, of defeat, not now. His bones, his very matter, creaked against the abuse he'd heaped on himself in the last forty-eight hours. Even an Übermensche could feel pain. But the difference was, he didn't allow pain to stop him.
Fleeing into the chaos of the ruined city, Khan's next goal was a simple one: revenge. That damned Vulcan would pay for the blatant murder of his friends, his family. It might take years, decades, but Khan had the patience to wait.
It was a dish best served cold, after all. As Marcus had discovered...