The Tortured Genius

24

Male

Niklos Aleksander Holloron

Nik, Sergeant Holloron

Wols

What Happened on Wols

Niklos

People of Victory

Neek-los

Aleksander

Defender of Men

Aleck-zan-der

Holloron

Descendant of a Pirate Or Stranger From Overseas

Holl-or-ohn

Human

Small and skinny with a lean, muscular build. While not as physically strong as his comrades, he could hold his own in a fight in his prime. After months of torture and captivity, he's lost most of his muscle mass.

Underweight

Naturally olive, but it's grown very pale from his time in captivity. Varying degrees of scarring.

5'3"

Black

Blue-grey

Although he kept it impeccably neat during the war, his hair is now wispy and long enough to fall across his face, though not to be tied back.

Usually some stubble.

Varying degrees of scarring across most of his body; PTSD; lost two toes, which resulted in a slight limp.

Missing two toes on his right foot with heavy scarring up that leg. Various other scars across his torso, arms, neck, and part of his face varying in size, shape, and color. He was held captive and tortured for nearly a year and bears the scars of it, both mental and physical.

Niklos has a hair-trigger temper, although he tries to control it. He postures at being fully disaffected by his time as a prisoner of war, although the trauma he endured during that has effected him greatly. He's constantly on-edge and ready to pick a fight. He's fiercely defensive of the people he cares about to an overprotective degree. At his core, he's someone who was deeply hurt but refuses to let others aid him. As a recon agent and later even as a prisoner of war he felt as though he had a goal (get information; don't break) but now lacks that feeling and just feels empty and adrift, even turning to self-harm at one point in an attempt to regain that control and to feel alive, as pain had been the main way he had known he was still alive for months. Niklos has the most complex feelings on the Truce out of the Golden Iris crew; he resents what it stands for but also knows that had the war gone on even a few weeks longer, he would have died. Since he was sold out by a double agent, he struggles to trust others, even those who he knows and who he knows are sympathetic to his side of the war.

Stands very stiffly, usually has his jaw clenched. Slight twitch in his left eye when he's trying to contain his anger.

Sketching. As a recon agent, his skills laid more in spy work than in physical combat. Due to his childhood as a retriever on Kauff, he's quite good at climbing and agility tasks.

Right now, his motivation is to try and get back to an approximation of the life he had before the war.

Sketching, attempting to write poetry. He takes up boxing as well.

Niklos struggles to control his emotions, often lashing out at those around him whether their intentions are good or bad. He's abrasive and sometimes even physically aggressive, although he does his best to curtail that after injuring a friend. He's prone to emotional outbursts followed by instant regret. While the other vets tend to have a slight dislike for those from Chora and Yeley, Niklos' dislike and distrust is by far the strongest given what he endured under them. Blunt to a fault.

Has the strongest prejudice towards those on the opposite side of the war (namely citizens of Chora and Yeley) out of all of the Golden Iris residents.

His favorite possession had been a ring from his childhood friend Grady O'Neill. As Grady lost his in the crash that claimed his hand, Niklos lost his when it was forced off of his hand and then melted down.

Grady O'Neill
Simon Fitzsimmons
Dorothy Dixon

As a child, he had a slight crush on Grady O'Neill, though it didn't blossom into anything major, it made Niklos realize he was bisexual when Grady transitioned. Later on, he had a brief but passionate relationship with Dorothy Dixon during a recon mission early in the war. During his time as a prisoner of war, the idea of returning to Dottie is one of the things he holds on to to keep himself from losing all hope. Upon reuniting, however, he and Dottie realize that neither of them can make a relationship between them work, although they stay friends. He then starts to befriend Simon Fitzsimmons , a fellow veteran who, like him, is dissatisfied with the Truce and turns to art as an outlet--and who was also deeply traumatized during his experiences. While neither are really ready for a relationship, the seeds for one is there.

Hawks

His fists, and his pistol. He'll use pretty much anything to win a fight if it comes to it, though.

Former soldier. At the coaxing of Simon Fitzsimmons and Dorothy Dixon, he takes up sketching and attempts poetry.

As mentioned prior, Niklos loathes what the Truce represents, but feels as though he can't truly protest it since without it, he would have died. He enlisted dually out of a desire to get off of Kauff and a desire to fight for a cause he believed in--he wanted both to end the fascist system in place on Chora and Yeley and to free Chiri from its grasp.

Atheistic--the way he sees it, if any gods existed, his praying would have worked.

Black

Anything he can get his hands on--months of near starvation ensured that he isn't picky about his food.

Niklos was born on Kauff to a family of cliffside scavengers (also called retrievers). He grew up in the same village as Grady O'Neill and the two were close friends, often pairing up to climb or dive together. While Kauff wasn't the most progressive planet, the people there really didn't care about how a person identified as long as they got work done, something that came in handy when Grady came out as trans (to Niklos' surprise, as he had assumed that Grady was a cis boy due to how he presented himself and that he was never told otherwise). Grady, however, soon moved to Ondalay to pursue a formal education in piloting once his gift for it was discovered, as well as to transition medically as the services to do so were more modern there.

When the war broke out, Niklos enlisted both to get off planet and due to a belief in the cause--after all, if Chora's rule spread across the galaxy, it would put him at risk.

Mediocre

March 6th

Marley and Aric Holloran

Art credit to the makowka character maker II Picrew by makowka

https://www.pinterest.com.mx/ZooeySpring/niklos-holloran/