Description
¶ Overview
- Full Name: Riley Aimes
- Aliases: Swing Dance
- Species: Human
- Ethnicity: Asian
- Nationality: League
- Born: May 3rd, 2655
- Place of Birth: New Corinth
- Gender: Non-binary
- Sex: Female
- Sexual Identity: Pansexual
- Faction: League; Freelance
Riley Aimes is an irreverent tease who delights in subverting people's expectations at every turn. When the rubber meets the road, though, they will step up and employ their not-insignificant skills to aid those they have chosen to be their friends and family.
¶ Physical Description
Riley aims for a very androgynous look, maintaining their lithe build and avoiding laying muscle on too heavily. They enjoy dressing in ways that deliberately defy easy categorization. Overall, Riley hates fitting into any specific box and will do whatever they can to ensure that they can't be pigeon-holed.
¶ Personality
To Riley Aimes, life is so utterly pointless and cruel, that you ought to just try and find as much laughter in it as you can. They will go to some extreme lengths for an excellent prank, and absolutely nothing will deter them (except d'Ardenne). The West Isles crew has learned that if Riley gets serious, the situation is genuinely heading towards catastrophic.
If you needed someone to plan the most kickass party, stock it with any kind of drink or drug you may want, and fly your whole group to the location, Riley is your person.
¶ History
¶ Early Life
Riley Aimes grew up in what most anyone would consider to be a perfectly average League family. Upper middle-class, three kids, two cats, and as close to a house with a white picket fence as you can get in the future. Unfortunately, such a perfect exterior tends to hide deep rot underneath.
¶ Family and Personal Life
Despite gender identity, gender re-assignment, and a host of other identity issues being socially accepted across 99% of human space, some people still have old hang ups when it comes to people making decisions about their own identities. For Riley, their mother had a very clear plan for her perfect little family, including the number of children and their genders. For Riley to reject the strictly female gender identity that their mother wanted was seen as a personal attack on Mrs. Aimes and the whole family.
As Riley came to understand their own identity during their secondary education, they had to live with a non-accepting mother, a father that just wanted peace and quiet and sided with Mrs. Aimes over Riley every time, and two brothers who more often than not used Riley as a way to avoid punishments. Needless to say, Riley got out as soon as they could.
In the years after they left, their younger brother eventually reached out and re-established contact after he discovered his own identity didn't mesh with their mother's perfect little family image either.
Once Riley was safely out of their childhood home and into the League military, they quickly discovered that along with being non-binary they were also pansexual, and they took extreme delight in exploring that aspect of their identity.
Their longest relationship was with a free Lyndri named Kyja who worked at a bar on the station the Frey most often docked at. Through her, Riley was able to safely explore their identity. When Kyja left to go open a bar on the Sidus Arborum station, Riley almost resigned their commission to join her. It was Kyja who stopped them by predicting (correctly) that being stuck on a single station would drive them crazy. Kyja also correctly understood that Riley was confusing the feeling of safety with being in love. The two have managed to develop a strong friendship since they seperated and Kyja remains as Riley's primary point of advice.
¶ Religious Views
Riley would dearly love to convince everyone that they are completely free of any religious beliefs, but the reality is that growing up, the place they felt the safest was at their local Coven of the Great Mother. In point of fact, attending religious services was the one thing Riley and their mother agreed on. Albeit for wildly different reasons.
Riley is still likely to be found at a Coven when they can make a service. Walker made the mistake of walking into a Coven service to retrieve Riley for mission once, and noticed their defensiveness almost immediately. Since then, he's worked to ensure that no one on the crew brings up the Coven with Riley unless they bring it up first. They'll never say it, but they are deeply thankful to Walker for doing that.
¶ Military Life
The August after their 18th birthday in 2673, Riley enrolled at the League Naval Academy on Chalcedon in the Helm Track. They had been identified early on in their secondary school career as a likely candidate for the LNA and their aptitude tests during their last year of secondary school placed them in either the Helm Track or Intelligence Track.
When the Academy recruiter came to speak to them and presented their Track options, Riley was able to identify that the Intel Track was being presented because they had been forced to live a major portion of their life in secret from their family. This led to them developing a not insignificant level of sneaking and lying skills that would have served them well in Intelligence. What Riley knew that the aptitude test missed was that their personality would not mesh well with the life of an Intelligence officer. So they chose the Helm Track.
¶ League Naval Academy
Riley thrived at the Academy. For the first time in their life they were able to use their preferred pronouns and met with exactly zero push-back from anyone. They began to branch out in their dating and sexual life and again, no one batted an eye.
The academic side of the Academy was also fairly easily for Riley as they had never really struggled with academics. Where they did struggle was with the regimented, military side of the experience. Eventually, though, they adapted to this aspect as well, and if you catch them in a serious moment, they would acknowledge that the ridged structure was useful to them. To this day, Riley's bunk on the Chilkoot is the only one that is made up every single day.
This isn't to say that they didn't cut loose. In point of fact, and Riley would likely admit this as well, they cut loose too much during their time at the Academy. They were regularly brought up for demerits from returning to base too late or being disruptive after an evening of partying. It took a coincidental meeting with then Captain Ty'Sii Circean when the LSS Duban came to the Academy for a cadet tour, for Riley to begin turning their behavior around.
Captain Circean had slipped away to a bar in town that was frequented by Lyndri, and as it turns out, that was the same bar that Riley had taken to visiting whenever they needed a quiet place to think. They had been brought to the bar for the first time by a Lyndri they frequently slept with.
Circean noticed the cadet's arrival but didn't speak to them until the bar's owner, a free Lyndri that Circean had worked with in the Kingsguard, strongly suggested that the lone human in the place could use some words of wisdom. The two of them ended up talking for hours and at the end of evening, Circean escorted Riley back to the Academy and began quietly keeping an eye on their performance.
When Riley finally graduated a year late in May of 2678, Captain Circean pulled some strings to get Riley an initial posting on the LSS Molpe, one of the two Archigos-class escorts based on the LSS Shadrach.
¶ LSS Molpe
Riley settled in well with the crew of the Molpe and the other Helm officers welcomed them and helped them fill in the gaps between their academic knowledge and the real world skills that were required on an operational ship. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the four years they spent on the Molpe were the happiest they had ever been prior to joining West Isles.
The happy days couldn't last, and in 2682 Riley was ordered to transfer to the LSS Frey.
¶ LSS Frey
The last two years of Riley's military career were spent onboard the older Super Dreadnought the LSS Frey. Riley had been ordered over to the old ship because they had excelled as a Helm officer and the Molpe didn't have room for two Helm Seconds. The Frey had just had a fairly severe crew shake up and Riley was the one tapped to step into the Helm Second position.
They got along well with their Helm First and with a majority of the bridge crew, but with the 2nd Officer and the Executive Officer, they got off on the wrong foot. When the clashes began, it became very apparent that the 2nd Officer held a poor opinion of Riley because they had briefly dated the 2nd Officer's little brother and it had ended poorly. After a few months and two shouting matches, the two of them arrived at an emotional cease fire. When accusations were brought against Riley, the 2nd Officer was one of the people who spoke in their defense.
Things with the Executive Officer never improved and eventually, it cost Riley their commission.
¶ Discharge
Why, exactly, the XO of the Frey was so hellbent on drumming Riley out of the Navy was never made clear and for the most part, they eventually just chalked it up to basic bigotry.
When it went down, it happened fast.
In February of 2684, Riley was returning to the Frey after Kyja broke their relationship off. They had walked Kyja to her ship and were trudging over to their own ship when four League MPs approached them and took them into custody.
Riley found themselves dragged directly in front of a court martial board and learned, there before the board, that they were being accused of illegally selling League Navy-issued sidearms to a vague criminal element. The prosecution claimed that the XO had discovered the arms deals when the Quartermaster suffered a crisis of conscious and come forward. They had arranged for an early retirement for the Quartermaster in exchange for the rest of the ring, which mainly meant Riley.
When the case was reopened three years later, it was immediately obvious to everyone who watched the recordings that Riley was completely unaware of what they were being accused of, or any details of the arms trade. The chair of the board's repeated misgendering of them strongly indicated that the entire proceedings were more motivated by bigotry than anything else. In any case, on what had become one of the worst days of Riley's life, they were drummed out of the Navy without appeal. MPs escorted them to their quarters on the Frey, watched them pack their belongings, and then marched them back off of the ship, confiscating their Military ID, Comm, and their sidearm.
Once again, Riley found themselves without a family due to disapproval of their identity. Three years later, they would learn that seeing them be escorted on and off the ship had caused so many people to go to the Captain with their concerns and complaints that the Captain began a quiet investigation into what, exactly, had happened to Riley. The results of that investigation were found by Walker d'Ardenne and he used them as the foundation of the review that he managed to instigate.
¶ Underworld Life
In the meantime, Riley found themselves put ashore with no idea what to do next. Their only real point of contact on the station had just departed, and the resources of the League now seemed completely out of their reach. In an ironic twist of fate, one of the criminal contacts named in the court martial tracked them down and offered them a job. This particular arms dealer, one Adrian LeMarque, was never one to walk away from a good story, and when he heard that Riley was the one that the sidearms sale had been pinned on, he saw an opportunity for them both.
LeMarque had some long-term goals for his own success, and Riley provided an avenue to make one of those a reality. LeMarque intended to become a proper pirate king and had his eye set on purchasing Clew Bay station. To do that, though, he needed capital. He had plenty of merchandise to move, and a ship that could do it, but he couldn't find anyone to fly the ship for him. His pitch to Riley was simple: you fly my ship and go sell my goods for me for a few years, I'll pay you more than the League did, put you in touch with a whole network of people who you can work with on your own, and once you're done flying with me, I'll make sure you've got everything you need to take down the people who drummed you out of the Navy. Riley leapt at the offer and found themselves in the pilot chair of a Hazard Hawk 60 called the Whydah.
They spent the next two and half years flying around in League and Freelance space selling LeMarque's goods and slowly branching out into their own smuggling trade. LeMarque was good to his word, and Riley was introduced to fences and blackmarkets across human space. They were making more than they had ever made in the Navy, but at the end of the day, they weren't happy.
At their core, Riley was a very communal person and they were missing a concrete place of belonging. Their opportunity to find a new place to belong showed up when they arrived at Clew Bay in August of 2688.
¶ West Isles
¶ Meeting d'Ardenne
LeMarque, ever true to his word, was beginning to make his impact on Clew Bay. He wasn't in a place to purchase the station just yet, but he was making the connections he'd need to do just that.
When Riley arrived with the Whydah,they found LeMarque deep in conversation with Walker d'Ardenne. As they approached, LeMarque and d'Ardenne stopped and turned towards them. LeMarque introduced them to Walker and told Riley that this was a man who could make use of their talents and, if they still wanted to, d'Ardenne could probably make some justice happen for Riley. He clapped them on the shoulder and told them that the Whydah was theirs.
Walker and Riley took a walk around Clew Bay. By the time they got back to the Whydah's dock, Riley had agreed to help West Isles out as helm and navigator on a temporary basis until d'Ardenne could get them actual justice from the League Navy. Walker introduced Riley to Emmy and the three of them flew off to procure two cargo containers from a derelict station. When they asked Walker what the containers held or what they were for, he just smiled and told Riley that they were part of a deal for a brand new ship.
The derelict station was by no means abandoned. Pirate crews tended to use it as a place to strand troublesome crew and securing the containers proved a bit more challenging than Riley expected. After a fairly harrowing day spent dodging insane stranded pirates and fighting with old and unmaintained systems, they finally secured their cargo and dove away. d'Ardenne, surprisingly, had Riley plot a course to Calysto and told them that he was going to make good on the promise of justice.
¶ Justice
When they surfaced at Calysto, Walker told Riley to make for Freedom Station instead of Corona Astra. As they were preparing to dock, Riley was reading off the list of ships docked at Freedom Station and noted that the Frey was docked here, as was the LSS William Wallace, the flagship of, now Admiral, Ty'Sii Circean, and the LXS Rokkr, the flagship of Admiral Alastair McKenzie, the LSS Molpe, a Nyx-class called the LSS Sphinx, and a Helios-class called the LSS Antu.
It turns out that the Frey's 2nd Officer had been helped by d'Ardenne at some point and reached out when what happened to Riley came to light. d'Ardenne, in turn, had asked LeMarque to keep an eye on them and had begun digging. What he found had been big enough that he felt perfectly comfortable with calling in the big guns.
Through a series of intermediaries, Walker arranged for evidence of an arms dealing ring within the League Navy, one that frequently covered its tracks by framing naval officers who had some sort of queer identity, to land on the desk of Admiral McKenzie. Put mildly, McKenzie set out to destroy the ring as an example.
The ships docked at Freedom Station that day all carried officers willing to go to bat for Riley, or carried officers involved in the ring, if not both. A week later, Riley's status had been changed to an honorable discharge with a full package of retirement benefits at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Over a dozen officers ended up caught in the prosecution, which opened the door for younger officers to step into command roles.
¶ The Chilkoot
After the part of the sweep that cleared Riley's name, d'Ardenne invited them to come with Emmy and himself to see their new ship. It was a blatant attempt to bring Riley onboard as their navigator and helm, and everyone knew it.
Riley tried their best to stay aloof, knowing that they had the Whydah and enough contacts to do very well for themselves as a mover of independent goods. However, when they got close to the CNK Shipyards and Riley laid eyes on the Chilkoot, they knew they were joining d'Ardenne's crew.
¶ Legacy
...
¶ Ships
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Chilkoot - The Primary ship of the West Isles Company
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LSS Frey - The Freya-class Super Dreadnaught that was their last posting in the League.
¶ West Isles Crew
¶ Walker d'Ardenne
¶ Mikhail Janson
¶ Emmy Sinclair
¶ Anya Tyr
¶ Whitney Antares
¶ Major Associations
¶
- Relation: