"You know what they say; 'Overkill is underrated,' and if they don't say that then they should." - Shane Ryder expounding upon some of his more outrageous customization decisions.
Shane Ryder is a thirty year old mercenary currently residing on Omega and a member of AEGIS. He is generally calm, usually sarcastic, and often pessimistic. He is a former N5 Alliance Marine, and a veteran of the notorious Torfan campaign.
Biography
Early Life
Shane Ryder was born some time during the year 2156 in the Camden area of the New York megalopolis. An area famous for its gang wars, urban decay, atrociously mismanaged social welfare programs, and corrupt law enforcement. Shane spent the majority of his childhood stealing in payment for gang protection and often for food as well, he became well informed about the myriad of social problems affecting Camden at the time, which would drastically effect his view of Earth as a whole later in life.
Eventually after a rather unusual theft, Shane developed the ambition to leave Earth, and by extension Camden far behind, and to do so in the only way he knew of, joining the Alliance. Now with a goal in mind, Shane began to use underhanded tactics to pit the various gangs of the region against each other, and in so doing keep them off his back. Of course after he got the ball rolling things intensified all on their own, and by the time he signed his enlistment contract and left the city at eighteen, Camden was embroiled in the flames of the largest gang war in the last forty years.
The Alliance
The first year of Ryder's career was mostly spent on patrol, occasionally engaging pirates or slavers. For the most part it was uneventful. In the second year of his career however a pirate base turned out to be far more heavily defended than adevertised, the gunship transporting he and his squad was hit by enemy fire and the pilot killed. Ryder made an attempt to gain control of the craft however he did not have the expertise to dodge SAMs, the gunship crashed, most of the occupants were killed, and Ryder's left arm was pinned beneath debris. He was then forced to hold off the attacking pirates for two hours before rescue teams arrived and extracted him and the few survivors.
Unfortunately the damage to Ryder's left arm was irreperable and he was forced to remain off active duty until his prosthetic therapy was completed. During this time he was reccomended for training in the Special Operations program. After nearly eight months of physical therapy and just over a year of training Ryder graduated with the designation N5, specializing as an infiltrator.
Ryder's first mission as an N5 was a baptism of fire at Torfan. First assigned to infiltrate the base and recover databanks, as the mission rapidly went south, he was issued rapid-fire and sometimes contradictory orders over a period of several hours. Eventually Ryder was ordered to extract a trapped squad and evacuate the base. No sooner had they left then the base's antimatter core went critical. Ryder was promoted and decorated for his actions at Torfan.
Nearly five years after Torfan, one of Ryder's closest friends was sexually assaulted by their superior officer. Ryder immediately attempted to kill said officer. The officer survived the attempt and Ryder was placed in a holding cell. Not long afterwards the victim committed suicide, the officer escaped charges due to family political influence and Ryder soon found himself in a court-martial.
Fortunately his lawyer was decent, and he was found not guilty due to insanity, unfortunately he was also discharged due to insanity. Thus began the next chapter of his life.
The Freelancing Years
A year after Ryder's discharge, he tracked his old enemy to an assignment to clear a small mercenary hide out. Ryder lay in wait and assassinated the man. Over the next few years, he freelanced for a variety of companies and organizations, it was for the most part unremarkable. In 2183 however Ryder was being booked by C-Sec for smuggling in a case of mistaken identity when alarms began to go off. As C-Sec sent out more and more men to counter the Geth incursion and few if any returned, they were forced to begin deploying detectives, desk jockeys, and even the people being booked. Ryder spent the Battle of the Citadel pinned down in a tunnel by Geth and Husks with a group from Investigations, including a turian named Venturus.
Present Day
Ryder showed up on the boards in late 2185 and joined up with AEGIS in early 2186. His first major exploit was as a part of a small army of mercenaries who took it upon themselves to hunt down and kill a particularly arrogant and despicable slaver named Caldus Discori, he spent the majority of that mission sniping and even managed to severely damage a small transport through judicious use of high-pressure fuel tanks.
Not long afterwards another member of CDN was kidnapped by a sociopathic ship captain named Rhodes. AEGIS was hired for the rescue operation and Ryder assigned as team leader. Although there were several severe complications, including another freelancer with designs on Rhodes' life, the operation was largely a success. The hostage was rescued alive, after Ryder interrogated Rhodes, he killed the Captain and turned him in for a substantial Alliance bounty.
Later Ryder, Aleksander Harris, Everett Malizewski, James Lear, Thomas Carmichael, Macul Atum, and Clint Van Wallach, as well as their STG handlers Aphin Protretho, and Sirinic Scaramanji landed on the planet Yomi to assault the central intelligence of a sentient hive-mind parasitic organism. After much difficulty and terror, they left the planet as the organism was destroyed by a nanite bomb.
Ryder is now back to doing various assignments with AEGIS but they just don't quite compare to the nerve-wracking Yomi operation, Ryder isn't quite sure whether or not that's a good thing.
Physical Appearance
Ryder is rather short at five foot four, he has fair skin, light brown hair and hazel eyes, he is muscular though not bulky. He has a knife scar on the right side of his face running from temple to jaw, his left arm is a military grade iridium plated prosthetic. Shane has a tribal sleeve tattoo on his right forearm and a tattoo of a cracked skull overlaid with crosshairs with the caption "Snipers get more head" on his right shoulder. He wears medium weight armor while in combat or anywhere on Omega. Other times he tends to wear cargo pants, t-shirts, and jackets, formality is not something he is overly concerned with.
Personality and Relationships
Personality
Ryder is a calm and sarcastic person with an often pessimistic view. He's a mercenary with standards, a line drawn in the sand that he will not cross for anything, but still essentially a gun for hire, if a rather skilled one. Ryder tends to be laid back and straightforward, he'll tell you his opinion, if you disagree he might argue the point but in the end he doesn't really care what most people think of him. Ryder believes that 'might makes right' is the way things are, though he doesn't really believe that's a good thing, he especially despises slavery and those who practice it. Ryder has a certain amount of bigger is better mentality about him, he likes big guns, he likes making those big guns even bigger and deadlier even more, as illustrated when he strapped a grenade launcher to a Revenant, make an over-compensation joke at your own peril.
Velpa Incune
Velpa is a former Hierarchy sniper and AEGIS's other sharpshooter. Ryder met her upon joining AEGIS and they quickly became fairly good friends. Later partly due to the machinations of Thel'Adean they began dating. The first date ended rather badly when someone made an attempt to mug them, unfortunately for the mugger interrupting Shane's date is a rather bad idea and he shortly found himself hurtling towards the bottom of Omega at terminal velocity after being thrown from a walkway. The subsequent dates went much more smoothly, and to Shane's pleasant surprise though Velpa was worried she did not break up with him after he vanished without a trace on the potentially lethal Yomi operation. The fact that the relationship exists is more or less public knowledge, however how far exactly it has gone is unknown, neither Velpa nor Shane is really interested in shouting it from the rooftops.
Thel'Adean vas Tinketta
Thel is Shane's closest friend and often confidant, they met upon the end of the Discori operation and became friends not long after Thel joined AEGIS. Shane tends to see Thel as a younger sibling, especially after the traumatic experiences of the Rhodes Operation, and does his best to give him the benefit of his greater experience. They tend to enjoy working together on mechanical projects, and occasionally going out drinking, which often ends in Thel dragging Shane's drunk ass home.
Other Relationships
Elara T'Meyra: Shane's other confidant, after going to her while unsure of himself after the Rhodes op he trusts her almost implicitly. One of the few people he's willing to admit his insecurities to.
Korwun Gorik: Shane's boss, the founder and leader of AEGIS. Shane considers him a friend, and is usually his go to person for combat advice.
Aleksander Harris: An old acquaintance from Shane's Alliance days, after meeting again during the Yomi op, and recognizing each other a few weeks later, Shane is making an attempt to reconnect.
Aphin Protretho: After the op on Yomi Shane definitely considers Aphin a friend of the fire-forged variety, he is a little in awe of the former STG operative and often finds amusement in Aphin's sarcastic remarks.
Everett Maliszewski: Shane is friendly with Everett but sometimes considers him too naive for mercenary work.
Flower Wilde: Rather unique amongst those Shane calls friends is Flower, whom he has never met in person, who has never seen combat, and who is in fact a child. However Flower is also a former duct rat and he feels a certain kinship with her, he often steps up to defend her should someone verbally attack her and occasionally attempts to give her advice.
Kevla: Another member of AEGIS, Kevla is cheerful and fun-loving, almost impossible not to like really. Kevla is often Shane's other drinking buddy as well as the person he usually goes to for relationship advice.
Trivia
- Shane's forays into mechanics are not limited to his customized Revenant, he has also outfitted a set of medium weight Kassa Fabrications Colossus armor with a Hahne-Kedar Predator kinetic barrier module, built a heavy duty external heat sink for use with High Explosive rounds, and is currently building an APC with Thel's help.
- Shane is an amateur linguist and has thus far learned Russian, Chinese, Khelish, and Thessian.
- In addition to his other hobbies, Shane enjoys cooking, although it has been remarked by some that the sheer amount of spice in his food will not allow you to taste anything afterwards for at least a week.