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[notleavingquietly]

User Name/Nick: Becky
User DW: n/a
E-mail: bhoadley@gmail.com
Other Characters: None currently

Character Name: Bialar Crais
Series: FarScape
Age: 40?
From When?: After he sacrifices himself and Talyn.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. At the point of his death, Crais had made quite a lot of progress. He had gone from being a villain to an ally to the crew of Moya. That journey is by no means complete; he still has a long way to go.

He does not listen to, or work with, others so much as he appears and does what he believes he needs (or wants) to do without input or room for discussion. Challenge to his authority and lack of control terrifies him. He trusts no one else's authority at all. He is ruthless. He can be violent. He is arrogant, rigid, and incredibly angry. He, to quote his wiki, wants the universe to operate according to his rules, and only he knows what those rules are.

He made the grand gesture, but he made it as much to get revenge against Scorpius (and his lack of options for Talyn) as because of the danger Wormhole technology posed to the universe.

He does not know how to live as anyone but the person he has been for most of his life and that needs to change.


Item: N/A
Arrival: He agreed to come.

Abilities/Powers: None. He does however have better than human eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell. Better than human does not mean supernatural levels.

Personality: Crais has some really, really, strongly good qualities.

He is loyal and dedicated to those who are his. He is an excellent protector, teacher, and mentor. We see this a bit in how seriously he took his promise to protect his brother, and we see much, much more of it in his relationship with Talyn. Talyn is young, unstable, and violent. All traits that you would expect Crais to make worse, but he actually manages to temper them. Not completely or perfectly, to be sure, but a lot. Even when Talyn gets steadily worse as the show progresses and Crais is being physically hurt (and his life threatened) by neurofeedback, Crais' primary concern is figuring out how to help Talyn. When he can't, in the end, and he says that sacrificing both himself and Talyn is 'the hero's end that Talyn deserves'. He clearly, clearly, loves Talyn like family, and is utterly dedicated to his ship. He hasn't had a lot in life that was his, and what is he attaches deeply to.

This of course has a darker side. All of hat loyalty is restricted. He is loyal to his brother. He is loyal to Talyn. He is loyal to himself and his goals. One of his actual quotes is "I live - I plan - I do - all in the service of my own interests. In that I believe I am not unique in the universe." He really looks out for his self-interests. It's just that his self-interest also includes protecting what is 'his'- and acknowledgement that he doesn't have much (anyone) left. The other, much darker, result of all of those good things (protective, attached) is that when combined with his fundamental self-interest and possessiveness is that he loses his shit when those attachments are threatened. His entire, blind, irrational, pursuit of Crichton and how long it took him to accept that it was an accident is evidence of just how far that goes. He progresses away from this some over the course of canon, but it's still there.

He is ambitious, competent, and capable. He sets goals and he achieves them. We see this all over canon. He isn't just a peacekeeper, he is a really good one. He raises through the ranks to that of captaining a command carrier. That is a rank rarely achieved by anyone who is not born on a carrier and he did it and he did it relatively (in the scope of things) young. He did not fake that; he truly succeeded at *becoming* a really good Peacekeeper (and at protecting his brother).

The flip of this one is, again, two fold. First, he is prone to being obsessive, ruthless, and not exactly moral in pursuit of those goals. He actually snaps someone's neck when his pursuit of Crichton is threatened. His experimentation and personal projects with Moya and leviathans that are in very, very early canon. More obvious is again his pursuit of Crichton after his brother is killed. And, ultimately, his lasting resentment and hatred of Scorpius for taking his command and his command carrier.

The second big negative here is that he uses authority, power, and control as a 'safety-net' of sorts. His advancement and competence in the Peacekeepers kept himself and his brother safe (as safe as they could be). That means that any challenge to his authority is a threat to his safety. That power and control - yes, over other people and being damn sure no one has any over him- is how he feels secure. You can see evidence of this when he is in The Chair and he's frantically and desperately trying to order Aryn to listen to him because he's still her commanding officer (he is not). This is, again, something that has improved some over time and the course of canon but is, again, still there. (See also how angry he is at Scorpius taking his command (and therefore power, authority, and control) from him).

Finally, he has a background and core of pacifism. This is from his childhood before he was conscripted by the Peacekeepers (along with his brother). It is not clear, but it exists and it is there. You can see this in his attempts to control Talyn and to work on having weapons only for defense and as Talyn becomes more unstabe becomes willing to entertain ever more extreme measures to protect others from his unstable ship (and to protect the ship from others). He wants other ways, other options, other methods - and when he can find them, he takes them.

Then, as always, the flip: When he can't find them (and fairly quickly), he reverts to what he has known for most of his life without any real guilt or hesitation. He's willing to execute Aeryn's mother. The command ship he took out with his own death had 50,000 people on it and many died. His death was fueled not just by a desire to protect the universe from Scorpius with wormhole technology because he was mad at Scorpius. His final speech at Scorpius he tells Scorpius that Scorpius stole his command and his life. He means it and he's enraged by it.

Basically, he is not a good person but he isn't completely terrible, either. He is a someone who could have been great, but being taken into the Peacekeepers as a child gave him only one set of tools and he embraced those tools, and using them is ingrained now into who he is. He needs to unlearn a lot of things he learned there, and relearn just as much about other options and who he is under the shit.

Barge Reactions: Crais is from a large, very strange, universe. He will be frustrated (and likely frightened) by breaches and floods, but other inhabitants of a wide variety of ages and species, a living ship, space travel, and general weirdness won't faze him much. The breaches and floods are entirely outside of his comfort-zone but that is exactly what he needs to grow.

He is, however, likely to believe the barge is a leviathan of some sort.

Path to Redemption: There are a few things that can help a warden with him. He chose to come here because, in his last moments, he truly felt as though his life were his own. He doesn't know how to achieve that again, but he wants more of it- hence his voluntary acceptance of coming to the barge.

He has an incredibly strong sense of familial responsibility; if he can graduate and become a warden he can help Talyn (his living ship that died with him and was growing increasingly unstable before death) - that is strongly motivating.

He has got to learn to feel safe when he is not in a position of authority. The Admiral will obviously not inspire that in him. The right warden can, simply by being unrelenting but trustworthy while being an authority/person with power in his life.

The biggest thing ultimately is that his childhood was spent, before the Peacekeepers, in a farming community with a strong spiritual/philosophical culture of pacifism. That will never be all of him again, but the core is in there and he's made bits of progress toward reclaiming those ideals through trying to temper and control Talyn. He needs more of that back; he needs more tools that aren't violence and power.

Deal: N/A
History: History

Sample Journal Entry: Here

Sample RP: Here

Special Notes: He looks human but he is not human. He is Sebacean. He has better than human eye-sight. He is extremely heat intolerant. His physiology also lacks redundancies (ie: he has a single 'nerve' that filters toxins rather than two kidneys).

Also of note, he has a metal disc embedded low on the back of his neck. This is a neural interface. Talyn is not on the barge/is dead so it isn't interfaced to anything, but it is still present.