Darius Morgan

Authored by David Shotton

Character Biography

https://i.imgur.com/w83kjzY.jpg

Physical:
Standing at 1.78m (5ft 10”) Darius will never be mistaken as a towering figure, his frame boasts 92kg (202lbs) of toned muscle shaped by the highly physical and demanding sport of Rugby Union, which he played professionally before joining Starfleet. Often considered short for his position of midfield he proved competitive with his combination of strength, pace and agility stemming from his dedication to punishing training habits. His reputation as a fearless tackler on defence was well-earned. Lightly tanned skin from his days in the outdoors in his home country of New Zealand and dark brown hair combed straight back, just starting to fade at the tips from sunlight and ocean salt give him a slightly rugged look more suited to an older, wiser person. Once past that, piercing grey eyes look out over a nose that has been broken once or twice, although with modern medical science there should be no reason it has never been repaired back to the way it was. Clean shaven and with a grin that screams mischief, people still get drawn back to the eyes, which his older sister describes as “going to get him into trouble one day, both kinds.”

Personality:
Darius loves to joke around but prefers to do a job once and do it right, something drummed into him by his Starfleet Engineer grandfather…”check it twice, fix it once or lose your hand”. He has a fondness for witty sarcasm that has embarrassed plenty of girlfriends during “meet the parents” occasions, and seen him given extra work as punishment by his Starfleet Academy officers on plenty more. Although polite and friendly, Darius doesn’t tend to make friends easily, preferring to give his time to a few and make it mean more than to many friends he cannot easily keep in touch with. He respects hard work, effort and achievement, and respects those even more who fail and then try harder to achieve. Despite his fondness for good humour he is highly committed to his profession and can become very serious when on the job.

Interests:
The aforementioned Rugby Union is his passion, and now he is in Starfleet he still spends time in the holosuites playing the game and watching the latest matches held back on Earth. He maintains his training regime from his playing days, although he has had to cut many bits out due to time constraints and practicality, but that just means he can push harder on what he has left. An avid camper and hiker he spent much downtime in the Academy travelling and experiencing places he had never been. Closer to home he is fond of cooking real food and has a very “sweet tooth” which often makes him feel guilty and work harder in the gym. On the occasions he can sit down, he enjoys old adventure, fantasy and sci-fi books (real ones, that he collects) written in the days before humanity had contact with “aliens”. He also plays an old instrument called a Pan Pipe although he is no master at it, he can get along well.

Competency:
To his great disappointment, he only achieved slightly better than average results with his phaser weapons training, despite many hours of practise in the holosuites of the academy. He did much better at the hand-to-hand content however, his natural agility, speed, co-ordination, strength and willingness to engage in physical confrontation from his playing days giving him a head start over many others. In his youth his Grandfather spent much time teaching him about engineering, and he did well at these courses in the academy before settling on the Security path. Shuttle piloting was marked as ‘competent’ at the Academy.

Flaws:
Due to his experiences after the loss of his parents and grandparents in his early teens he has developed a sense of relying on himself to get things done, and often won’t share the real him with other people, instead only promoting himself by what others see on the outside, sometimes to the detriment of his more personal social experiences. He can be somewhat unfair to himself when self-marking his actions, believing that he should and could of done things better. He enjoys strong drink and he can get carried away with it on occasion, especially if he begins to think of his youth. While he tries especially hard not to judge people by their species, understanding that his experience could unfairly influence his attitude towards them, he does find it particularly difficult to get along with Orions.

Background:
Darius Morgan was born in the city of Napier, New Zealand. The youngest of two, his sister Elyse was 3 when he was born. Darius’ mother was a Starfleet Tactical officer, and his grandfather (mothers side) a Starfleet R&D Engineer, while his father was a civilian biochemist working on Earth specialising in vaccines for virulent strains of rare viruses. Due to the nature of his mothers work she was not often home for long, but she had postings that were on smaller ships whose duties involved patrols and escorts closer to Earth. Growing up he spent much time with his grandfather and grandmother, as his fathers work also often took him off-planet for periods of time. He spent much time at the beach and in the forests of New Zealand, and playing sports to keep him occupied while his parents were working.

In his early teens a viral epidemic broke out on a colony world a few light years away, and both of his parents were among the personnel sent to assist the colony. The epidemic was brought under control in a matter of weeks thanks to the aid of the personnel sent to assist. Soon after the epidemic had been dealt with Darius’ mother and father decided that the family needed a holiday, and Darius’ mother secured passage on a freighter owned by a friend for the purpose of taking the family, grandparents included, to Risa. Unfortunately both parents had been infected with a mutated strain of the virus which had been undetected by Starfleet medical scanners and on the journey to Risa became suddenly ill. The confined nature of the freighter had meant that everyone on board had contracted the virus, but the mutated version only reacted with particular cells in the body, and in humans it proved to be only in adults that it became fatal. Once ill, the freighter sent out distress calls and Darius’ father began to replicate the vaccine for the virus. Unbeknown to him, in adults the mutated virus was now resistant to the vaccine but in the children, without the correctly developed cells, it was not. Thus within a few hours of the virus becoming active all the adults on the freighter were dead and only the 5 children on board survived, cured of the disease by his fathers vaccine.

That was not the end of the troubles for the first ship to arrive was a crew of Orion pirates, who took the opportunity while in EV suits to ransack the freighter and take the children captive. The pirates evaded Starfleet pursuit for 3 weeks before finding a buyer for the children, and their treatment of them was not kind during that time, especially for Darius’ sister Elyse. Fortunately the buyer, a Ferengi, was working for the Federation and shortly after the children were sold the Orions were captured. Once returned to Earth the children underwent counselling and were placed in homes, as none had family left after the incident. Darius’ became somewhat troublesome for a number of years due to the guilt he felt for being powerless to help his parents, grandparents and sister, but eventually Elyses’ calming influence settled Darius and he found sports again. With that, he also found himself and began to believe he could make a difference if he tried hard enough.

Eventually he became restless with the life of a professional sportsman, and when he felt himself becoming disillusioned chose to apply himself to something where he could make a real difference, so he applied to join Starfleet. Perhaps he could prevent people like those Orions from hurting others. One day, Perhaps, if he tried hard enough.

Medical:
-Relatively healthy all through his life, aside from the virus which killed his parents and which seems to have been dealt with by his fathers vaccination.
-Playing rugby he had the ‘common’ sports injuries of sprains and strains, and broke his nose a second time. He broke his nose the first time in a fight in his teen years, which he chose not to have repaired back to the way it was for personal reasons. This was the fight which convinced him he was on a downward path and needed to change.
-On the Discovery he broke two ribs and dislocated his left shoulder playing a holodeck game of Rugby. This was treated with no complications.
-On a mission he had an encounter with an odd, worm/serpent like creature which caused the skin around his lower right leg to blister when it came into contact with the slime covering its body. This also acted as an anaesthetic on his lower leg for a time and the situation prevented immediate medical treatment. While now healing, this area of skin has light scarring and often feels more sensitive, but he generally just deals with it. Medical opinion is that a number of treatments over time will remove the scarring and the sensitivity should return to normal.
-Suffered from a migraine on the Discovery which was identified as an exertion migraine from overdoing his workouts, had been having the odd headache up until then.

Current Posting
U.S.S. Olympic - Security - Ensign

Previous Postings
U.S.S. Discovery - Security - Cadet