Maritanus IV (Ringo)
From Axalon RPG
Contents |
Basic Info
- Created By: riboflavin
- Boards Active: Predacon Base RPG
- Name: Maritanus IV
- Aliases: Ringo
- Faction: Maximal
- Subgroup: Crew of the Sleipnir
- Type: Beast Warrior
- Beast Mode: Flying Fish
- Size: Medium
- Gender: Male
- Primary Function: Naval Science Officer: Probe Operations Specialist
- Secondary Function: Digital Painter
- Rank: Lieutenant 3rd Class
- Age: 8 s.c.
- Theme Song: The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Noted Quotes
"My opinion sir? Well the nebula has some interesting thermals I'd like to study."
"Thermals? You're serious, thermals. We're being hunted by a battlefleet, Lieutenant!"
"Yes, sir. I know, sir. That's why I don't offer my opinion much."
Statistics
- Strength: 6
- Stamina: 5
- Speed: 9
- Skill: 5
- Firepower: 8
- Aim: 7
- Intelligence: 8
- Discipline: 8
- Luck: 6
Total: 63
Skills
- Astronomy
- Art- Digital painting mostly, but has used other media. Could probably get into an art school if he were to try.
- Electronics- Specializing in the construction and maintenence of planetary probes, which in turn requires familiarity with a wide range of devices, however he is working at midlevel on a team of specialists, is primarily an operator, and is and working largely with prefabricated components, so he is hardly a master of the field.
- Flight: Assisted
- Swimming/Scuba
- Piloting: Remote- of said probes. Experience with doing so in astral, atmospheric and aquatic environments.
- Firearms
- Melee Weapons: Flail - Combat skills derive almost exclusively from Naval Academy basic training plus one course in the flail.
Physical Description
Beast Mode
http://www.fishbase.org/summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?id=1032
A dark turquoise colored flying fish, about eight feet long, two feet tall, and one and a half feet wide, with a fin-span of thirteen feet. Basically a normal looking fish except for the oversized, winglike pectoral side fins used for gliding and elongated bottom half of the tailfin used to propel itself out of the water. Flying fish are capable of jumping out of the water and gliding up to a few feet high and for up to 100 yards distance, which they do to escape predators. Ringo is capable of true flight in beast mode via antigrav drive. At low flight speeds and while hovering he will instinctually make swimming motions that don't really have much to do with his flight, but at higher speeds he will use his fins for lift and steering.
Transformation
Sides of fish become front and back. Head bisects down the center and forms shoulderpads, revealing robot head. Arms come out from top and bottom of fish, rear section splits in half top to bottom to form legs, tail becomes gun mounted on back. Large wing fins move to the usual place for wings on the back, though usually in robot mode they compress like a fan into long spines that don't do much more than get in the way.
Robot Mode
Tall, thin, bot, but with a streamlined muscular look. Blue scales and silver metal with aqua detailing make up his coloration. Small beast mode fins flare out from sides of thighs and forearms, and a mohawk-like fin tops his round scaly helmet. Forearms, thighs, and most of his torso are covered in blue beast mode scales and have well defined muscular detailing. Robotic parts have a rounded aerodynamic look typical of many Maximals. Also typical of many Beast Warriors is the kibble on his back- two large wing fins coming out of his shoulders, and usually folded up like fans and kept out of the way, and between them his tailfin pointing upwards. The tailfin is actually part of thestock of his primary gun, which he stores there, but we'll get to that later. Ringo has a young looking boy band face, silver with turquoise optics.
Personality
At first glance, Ringo is your average eager and loyal young naval officer. In truth, though, he's really, well, more or less your average eager and loyal young naval officer, minus some of the eagerness. He is leading the life he think's he's supposed to live rather than the one he wants to live, however to the extent he is aware of this fact he either accepts it with a shrug or rebels in only the most passive of ways. He makes it obvious that he's more gung-ho about exploring new worlds than blasting enemies, but he won't balk at an order. Also when he does get into a fight he does get into it more than you'd expect, but that's part and parcel of being Cybertronian.
Though brought online as an adult, at only 8 stellar cycles Ringo is very young. He's preprogrammed in some things and a quick learner in others, but in social situations his youth shows. He is awkward, shy, doesn't get all the jokes and is generally the opposite of a party animal (Ringo's nickname is ironic in this respect), except for when he's actually at a party, in which case someone will get him to drink and he'll be stumbling around slobbering by ten and passed out by midnight. Ringo has only been aware of the opposite sex for about half his life, and has no idea how to relate to it. He has never kissed a girl.
Maritanus IV is quick, curious, creative, adept at technical fields, and displays a dry sense of humor. He is easily discouraged, but quick to get over it and try again. His skill at digital painting (he's no Picasso, but he ain't bad either) shows that he might be better suited to some other function than naval officer, but he's still living in the shadow of the famous Captain Maritanus, whom he was cloned from, and has yet to realize that he has other possibilities. That said, he's doing alright as a naval officer as is, and if he were to really apply himself to it and take more initiative he could rise quite high in the ranks himself.
Armament
- Winglike Fins- On either side in beast mode, on back in robot mode, where they are usually folded up like fans. They're good for slapping people with.
- Electric Harpoon Gun- Stocky, rifle length multifunction weapon. Has halves of beast mode tailfin coming out either side. Covers most of his back when holstered there. Three firing options are as follows:
- Tethered Blade- V-shaped blade at the tip of the weapon is tethered to a 30 foot shielded cable and can be fired at opponents. Once the blade is lodged in the opponent, the cable delivers a powerful electric shock from the weapon, which is more than enough to knock out most Predacons. The cable is made to be tough to hack through, but in the event that it is, the blade has a simple antigrav retrieval function so that Ringo can at least get it back fix it later. Blade can also be released from the gun and manually extended to be used as a flail. This is most convieniently done while the gun is holstered on his back- he can unsheath just the blade via some servos in the holsters for just such a purpose.
- Charged Harpoons (6) - Three foot long bolts fired one at a time from a port directly underneath the blade. High initial velocity (can go right through a well armored bot at close range) but drag tends to slow them down. Have small stabilizing fins at rear. 100 yard range in both air and water (drag and gravity make them even out). Once the harpoon lodges in the target for a quarter second or so, it releases a strong stored electrical charge, roughly 1/3 of what the Blade dishes out, but capable of doing as much or more damage if the harpoon is lodged deep in a bot's internals.
- Electron Beam - Focused electrical beam, discernable from a laser to the observer mostly by it's white color and loud thunder crack. For a Transformer with adequete shielding, it delivers a strong shock, stunning it and driving it back a little, but doing little lasting damage. Can be much more dangerous to a damaged bot or if it hits on a weak spot, though.
Equipment
- Digital Canvas- A flexable plastic display is stretched in a frame to make this so-called digital canvas, which can then be "painted" on by a stylus with adjustable force field "brush" extension. Photoshop and Illustrator type functions are then possible, and the projects can of course be saved, uploaded, etc. Expandable to 6' square, folds up to an easily stored 12"x3"x3" rectangular bar.
- Probes- One lightspeed capble (but not transwarp) space probe, two spherical aerial/aquatic probes, one terrestrial rover. Advanced sensor, analysis, remote control and sample retrieval capabilites. Limited stealth capabilities mostly intended to keep them hidden during visits to less advanced civilizations, but which can keep them off simple Transformer scans. Technically they belong to the Sleiphner, but Ringo has primary control and responsibility over them. (Yeah, these need more detail at some point)
Traits
- Swimming- Beast mode endows underwater breathing and natural swimming to a depth of 500m. Can swim in robot mode to those depths, and use antigrav flight to help move himself along, but is a far more agile swimmer in fish mode.
- Flight- Regular antigrav robot mode flight. In beast mode can do limited gliding unassisted, and can use antigrav drive for true flight. Can use fins for lift and steering in beast mode, and antigrav mostly for forward acceleration, enabling him to reach speeds of 300mph. Less maneuverable than bots with truly avian beast modes, however, and flight is somewhat unstable and susceptable to turbulence.
- Aquatic Hovercraft- Basically very low beast mode flight over water, where he dips the lower half of his tailfin into the water and uses it for additional propulsion and stabilization. Can reach 350mph over calm waters, has none of the stability problems of full flight, and is as manueverable as any watercraft.
History
The warring factions of Colony Xeno were finally ready to sit down and forge a peace agreement, but would only accept the renowned, trusted and diplomatically skilled Captain Maritanus of the Maximal starship Traverser as mediator. Alas, the Captain was rendered ill by an act of sabotage just before the negotiations were to begin. The crew had one option- use the cloning hardware they had captured from a renegade Predacon cell on their last mission to create a duplicate of Captain Maritanus. However, a perfect clone was impossible, for it would only have the image of a spark. The best they could do was to divide up the sum of his traits and considerable ability into four clones- One, the strategy, Two, the leadership, Three, the charm, and Four, the.. er.. leftovers. The plan worked, to a point. The negotiations went bumpily, but with the four of them trading off duties and a few insigtful, or maybe just lucky, observations from the otherwise amiable but useless number Four, nicknamed Ringo by the obscure reference loving tactical officer, the peace deal did finally go forward.
The original Captain Maritanus recovered soon after, startled to find four copies of himself onboard the ship now. He managed to deal with it, but unfortunately most of the clones did not. One by one, they became unbalanced, insane and dangerous, and had to be destroyed, all except Ringo, who was just, like, this guy, young and naive perhaps but not much moreso than any bot who'd just come online. One of the first things he did was get himself a beast mode so he'd look distinct from the modeless captain, though really he was a lot thinner and younger looking, so no one onboard was mistaking him anyway. He didn't really have a function onboard, and though he was a quick learner he got in the way more than anything with running the ship, so he tried out some hobbies, his favorite of which was painting. Taking the many astral phenomena the ship encountered as inspiration, it wasn't long before he was producing some fairly decent stuff. He got along well with the crew, and was even helpful sometimes, but they grew worried about his hero-worship-slash-jealousy-slash-quasi-father-figure relationship with the Captain. Some were worried he might go the way of the other three, others just thought it was a little unhealthy and he had to find his own way, so they dropped him off on their next visit to Cybertron.
Life on Cybertron was confusing, directionless, occaisionally nasty and overall pretty miserable. He tried for the whole starving artist working a crap job while trying to make a name in the art world thing, but that lifestyle made him nervous, and he didn't have much luck even finding the art world. He longed for the structure and purpose of serving on an exploratory vessel, and so determined to gain entrance to the Maximal Naval Academy. With a few good words from the captain and crew of the Traverser, he did. Ringo did well in his studies and graduated high in his class, but was not exceptional in any respect. He mostly kept to himself while there, made a few good friends, but after graduation they were given different assignments. Maritanus IV has been serving competently on the Sleiphner for approximately one year, primarily as a Probe Operations Specialist. When Captain Axle split the ship, Ringo happened to be, along with most of Axle's more trusted and competent crewmembers, in Axle's section. Since the ship's escape from the Rock, he has been shifted to more engineering and sensor related duties, as the crew is in the process of reshuffling itself to fill in gaps and settle in for the long voyage home.
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