Captain Corran Philip Atrios
CEO of Atrios Corporation (Retired, So He Says)
Captain of the Spectral Hyacinth
Appearance
Corran is the average height for a spacer, which would be considered tall for surface dwelling humans. Always, he wears the old-world style compression suits that he believes never should have gone out of style for their practical functionality. He wears a long, stained, and classic duster jacket that once belonged to a Starpriest named Stellon. He's modified with some modern technology but the style, and imperfections, remain. His face and body are scarred from tussles with pirates and rival scrappers and carries himself like a man who won't back down in a fight. He keeps his brown locks high and tight for more comfort in spacesuit helmets and has sported a full beard for over a decade now.
Personality
Softspoken and a man of few words, Corran is sometimes misjudged as being slow or dimwitted. However, once one gets to know him, they will find that he is just pensive and calculating. Many are surprised to learn that he has a sense of humor and that he can be quite loving when he thinks of it, but others have also known him to be distant and private. He is a proud man and considers it his duty to protect others at all costs. Those that have spent long hauls with him or known him a while have seen him open up and become more outspoken and willing to let his guard down.
Historical Background
Corran Philip Atrios was born on Vorpan, a city-moon in orbit around the gas giant Penelope in the Heriatas System. As was true of most kids born there, his parents worked for Heriatas Unlimited, a hydrogen-gas mining corporation so large it had purchased rights to rename the entire system after itself. His mother and father worked vastly different jobs but both left the moon every day to shuttle down to one of the massive platforms in orbit of Penelope. His father was a security technician in charge of the platform's automated defenses and his mother operated one of many thousands of drillscoops that collected gases from the upper atmosphere of the planet.
Not that Corran could tell you much else about his parents if asked today. He rarely saw them in those early years as they always returned home only be too exhausted to spend time with their only child. Sometimes they would take day trips to another moon which had calm, sandy, and crowded beaches you could visit. Other times they might peruse the Festival District with its many oddities, shops, and playgrounds. But generally, the young boy occupied his time with his education and trying to annoy the babysitters assigned to him by Vorpan Home Services while his parents were at work. That was, until the Vorpan Crisis.
To this day, scientists and investigators alike cannot agree on what took place. Whether by intricate and massive scale sabotage, some divine hand's involvement, or the simple facts of orbital mechanics, Vorpan's orbit around Penelope changed. From the time it was discovered, the millions of citizens occupying the city-moon were told there was three months to evacuate before Vorpan collided with another, much larger moon. Heriatas Unlimited has shoulderd the greatest burden of blame for the ensuing chaos, but logistical failures, opportunistic pirates, and other factors led to only half of Vorpan's citizens being evacuated in time before the entire satellite was obliterated.
The only reason Corran escaped was because of the efforts of a Starpriest of the Valan Order. He and some of his companions, using the registry of the Vorpan Home Services system, spent days gathering as many children as they could fit on their cruiser and took them to safety. Thus, Corran Atrios became an orphan and a Squire of the Order in the same day. At the Order's massive space station in the neighboring Llaoris System, Corran was taught the many trades and skills of the Starpriests. Their ancient religion traced its routes, allegedly, to the first humans to colonize the stars. They forwent new technology like holographic displays and automated flight systems for more "trustworthy" analog and mechanical systems. Starpriests were expected to be well rounded spacers with knowledge of fabrication, piloting, space walking, medicine, physics, and many other skilled fields. While they valued this lifestyle, many thought them as only being a "Jack of All Trades, but Master of None", as the saying went. All of that aside, the principle code of the Valan Order was to protect life at any cost.
Corran, a young man now, found life in The Order to be stuffy and rigid. He yearned for the bright lights of modern technology. He desired to leave the Starpriests' home but had no means of his own. Then, fate struck as the United Systems of Man came looking for him and his fellow survivors. Ten years after the Vorpan Crisis, the new Interstellar Parliament was looking for some positive public relations stories to make up for some disaster in another system somewhere far away. Providing restitution to a handful of survivors of an old catastrophe was the feel good tale they wanted the press to focus on while they fixed whatever it was that might get some of them beaten at the next primary. Corran and all the other "Children of The Crisis" were given handsome piles of credits and told to pay it forward to a grieving galaxy.
Whatever political designs were at work, Corran Atrios recognized an opportunity when he saw one. He purchased a small two seater salvage vessel and started his own company. He wisely only invested a small amount of his new small fortune and put the rest in other ventures. Soon, he was able to purchase a better, more effective ship and paid others to operate his previous vessel. As time went on, his company began operating on its own, salvaging ships and gaining contracts from the Llaoris government to clean up space wrecks and collect debris after accidents around stations and ports.
With Atrios Corporation firmly secure in the hands of his most trusted people, Corran began exploring for bigger and better opportunities. He eventually heard, through a Starpriest contact, tales of a forgotten battle from many centuries ago. A few jumps away, in a system far from the center of the USM, existed a star that had once harbored billions of humans. Now its planets were devoid of all life. Stories told of a massive conflict for the last remaining resources in a time when jumping between systems was much more expensive and difficult. After a long expedition and exploratory effort, he found what he was looking for. Between the orbits of two tidally locked ice worlds co-orbiting ice worlds was the wreckage of a thousand ships.
Atrios Corporation immediately claimed the site, though dozens of other companies contracted in to help explore and salvage the debris. However, just as the first waves of scavengers were returning with strange and ancient technology, the United Systems of Man declared the star, Ymir, and everything in its orbit an Historical Site of Record and forced all civilian salvage operations to cease immediately. Robbed of his find and frustrated, the government appeased Corran by naming him a Hero of the Galaxy for rediscovering one of humanity's former homes. It was small compensation for a find that would have made him and all other hard working spacers in the entire region wealthy and prosperous.
Several years later, Captain Corran Philip Atrios plays things much closer to the proverbial vest. His Starpriest contacts continue to feed him information as the good Captain searches the stars for the next forgotten derelict. He yearns to learn more of the past he caught glimpses of while a Squire of the Order and to make his fortune reclaiming humanity's past. Word among some scrapper and scientific circles is that Atrios has done it again, he's found something. Quietly, he hopes to gather a small crew and investigate for himself. This time the find won't be taken from him. This time he will get his answers.
Past Romantic Relationships
Living as a young man on a Starpriest station meant one thing. You lived with a lot of other men. Corran did not fancy them, though it was not for lack of trying. Those experiments failed and Corran turned to his research and apprenticeships as distraction all the way up until the he and the other so-called "Children of The Crisis" were made famous and given far too many credits for their age. Suddenly, there were many women seeking his attention. At 21 and 22, Corran was not disappointed by this.
Ultimately, these connections proved meaningless and only fun for a time. He refocused on his work and founded his company. It was only after he purchased his second ship, what he affectionately and officially named
Scrap Pile II in honor of the hunk of junk he started his operations out in, that he found something with meaning. The
Scrap Pile II had a crew of 5 including him and they all became close as they journeyed the deep space of the system, hunting for salvage and exploring. He first began a relationship with Mila, a beautiful young woman from a different moon around Penelope. She was an odd reminder of his past from one system over, but she was also not someone he could refuse.
He discovered quickly that she was also in a relationship with two of the other crewmembers. In turn, those two were romantic with the remaining two in ways Corran had never considered. Suddenly, he understood why this group was willing to take less pay to remain together. The realities of space travel meant that this was a far more common occurrence than his prudish Starpriest mentors would have him believe. He was hurt and angry at first, but the others gave him time. They were all crammed together into a small, janky spacecraft and he could not escape. This ultimately worked to his benefit as he did the only thing he could do, which was to start asking questions. He learned how they all made polyamory work and what compersion was supposed to be. His romance resumed with Mila and soon, he was with her girlfriend Alani as well. Jace and Taylor became his closest friends in any system and the group became an amazing team.
By the end of the trip, he made them all official partners in his corporation and bid farewell for a time as he resumed building his Corporation. Still, when the time came to find the Ymir wreckage with thousands of ships, they were on his exploratory crew and they spent several years together during that time. They shared the elation of the discovery with him and the frustration at having it all taken away. He remained with them in Llaoris for a time, but ultimately the call of the stars proved too much. He had so many questions about Ymir and he could not sit idle and run the Atrios Corporation from a desk in a high rise on the surface of a planet. Thus, he kept his title of CEO but relinquished operational control to the four people he trusted most. He calls himself retured but that is not technically true in any way.
Corran left them all behind and took off in his favorite ship, the
Spectral Hyacinth to continue hunting for answers and to do more for those like him who had not been so lucky as to receive help from outside. His friends and loves understood and continue running his company for him even while guessing at where he might be.
