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[OOC] Application
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Rho
AGE: 30
JOURNAL: galatea @ DW
IM / EMAIL: ishidaaaugh @ gmail
PLURK: katoptron
RETURNING: Yep! I play Hiro and Nico.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Miles Vorkosigan
CHARACTER AGE: 20
CANON ORIGIN: Vorkosigan Saga
CHRONOLOGY: For now, Miles is being taken directly after the end of Vor Game, the second major Miles book. Later on he’ll get updated with more canon.
CLASS: Not villainous - definitely a heroic type - but probably not keen on registering either. Likely to become Unsettled.
HOUSING: If Gregor Vorbarra also gets in this round, please house them together! Otherwise no preferences.
BACKGROUND: Miles has a lot of canon over many books and novellas. Fortunately each of them have their own wiki pages with a reasonably complete summary for each. The books that need covering as of Miles canon pull point:
Barrayar
Miles is a fetus throughout most of this book, but there’s important history that affects him directly. Important points:
The Warrior’s Apprentice
The Mountains of Mourning (Novella)
The Vor Game
PERSONALITY:
Miles is a young man who has spent his life bashing his head against the limitations set for him. Fortunately for him he’s wildly intelligent, with a strategic mind unparalleled by anyone except maybe his father. Miles spent (and continues to spend) most of his energy in stubbornly proving himself capable of doing anything anyone says he can’t do. Putting a wall in front of him is like waving a red flag in front of a bull - his immediate instinct is to run headlong into it. It’s part of why he first decided he was going to join the Imperial Military Service in the first place, despite his physical limitations. Everything in his life told him that he wouldn’t manage it without severe nepotism (as had been traditional for Vor lords like him previously), so he insisted on making it in just like everyone else. And failing at it, only to come back with a mercenary army instead. Telling Miles Vorkosigan not to do something is the quickest way to get it done.
Much of this stems from the fact that Miles had to fight just to survive in Barrayar’s culture. Many people on his planet - including his own grandfather - viewed anyone with physical defects as being less than human and unworthy of using up Barrayar’s resources. His own grandfather tried to kill him at least twice, with a possible third incident prompting Miles’ parents to keeping their son accompanied by a bodyguard at all times. Miles is someone who has had to prove, over and over again, that he is worthy of existence. That leaves a mark after a while, in the form of some crippling self-worth issues. Of course, his parents were as supportive as possible, never laying expectations on him that they thought he couldn’t meet and giving him enough space to find whatever life might make him happy. But everyone else … Miles is so used to being on the defense that he’s made it all into a grand offensive strategy: strike first, make himself completely unable to be ignored, make himself into a hero that can buck the expectations people have for him. He has a lot of issues with not ending up as the monstrous, hunchbacked figured from Barrayaran fiction. Miles is fundamentally a good person, and twists himself around backwards to prove it sometimes.
Miles’ limitation-busting tendencies is another reason why Miles is as good of a strategist as he is. Having been surrounded by tumultuous politics and people who are likely to start out with negative prejudices towards him, Miles has a very acute sense of whether someone is trustworthy or not. He's an excellent judge of character - mostly, with a few exceptions - and moves to surround himself with talented people as quickly as he can. If Miles can’t do it, he’ll find someone who can. Make it happen anyway. And if he still can’t win, then it’s time to shift the battlefield onto ground that he can hold.
Unfortunately, when you’re used to thinking of everything as a battlefield, then everything you do become a battle tactic. Miles really isn’t used to making normal friends. He’s used to collecting people, or growing up with them; he feels the need to trick or trap people into wanting to be close to him. Completely ignoring the thought that he might just be worthy of friendship all on his own merits, without any of the manipulation. Miles likes to make his goals and his friends’ goals just happen to align to keep them as close as possible. This backfires SPECTACULARLY on more than one occasion. It’s ultimately the cause of Sergeant Bothari’s death in Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles, trying to impress his crush, puts Bothari face to face with the woman he raped, with drastic consequences. Later he tries to manipulate his future wife into spending time with him, also with drastic (but less fatal) results. This is the ugly side of Miles Vorkosigan: manipulative because he can’t quite trust himself to be a real person.
It probably comes as no surprise by now that Miles is a person of extremes. Wild, manic upswings are balanced out by massive downturns. Miles-the-twenty-year-old is still in the throes of all this. When he’s up, he’s pacing and throwing himself at wild goose chases, with no thought as to where that road is going to lead him. Staying in MoM is both going to fuel this urge as well as give him quite a lot of trouble because of it. If he makes a mission for himself, he’ll hurl himself into it with all his might; without it, he’ll be massively unhappy and spin his wheels. Probably some mixture of the two will be how he handles things in practice. Having Gregor in the game with him will be a massive boon in that respect. He is kind of the only member of ImpSec anywhere remotely close enough to keep the Emperor safe.
The downswings, though, are deeply unpleasant. The downside of being a master strategist means that Miles takes his all of his mistakes exceptionally hard, no matter how difficult they would have been to prevent in the moment. Enough guilt weighing him down and Miles goes into a tailspin that takes a very long time to recover from. Sometimes the two sides of his personality mix in alarmingly destructive ways. When Miles was younger, he reacted to rejection by his peers by going out, riding the wildest horse he could, and having the worst accident he possibly could. Other incidents have prompted suicide attempts of varying severity. Miles can be keenly self-destructive when he wants to be. His saving grace is that he rarely wants to drag anyone else down with him; wanting to save others is what often what drags him back up out of his funks. In MoM, wanting to protect Gregor is going to be his saving grace if they both get in; if not, he’ll have to find other important people to focus on when he can’t give enough to himself.
Miles takes oaths and loyalty incredibly seriously. Part of this is due to the Vor culture, which is based on oaths of fealty; a Vor’s word is binding. Vorkosigans take particular pride in that, so a promise made by Miles is a promise made unto death. This does not mean Miles won’t find loopholes … His reports back to Gregor and his superiors as a member of ImpSec have a number of very interesting omissions most of the time. But never an outright lie. (Until a later book, anyway, and that is an unmitigated disaster.) He also shows exceptional loyalty to taking care of the people he’s responsible for. His first concern after a successful mission with the Dendarii is to make sure medical expenses are paid for - up to and including a new face for a soldier who’d had her face melted off during one of his missions. He’ll be a good count one day. After he’s done being the little Admiral, anyway…
Both Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith are vitally important aspects of himself. Vorkosigan, Miles’ desire to be a productive part of his society and ultimately make it better for people like himself; Naismith, Miles’ expansive and limitless potential, pushed beyond all reasonable limits. Those around Miles comment that being Naismith is being more of himself than Vorkosigan normally allows himself, and that’s true. Naismith is all the extremes of Miles’ normal personality dialed up to eleven. Naismith is also a personality that is permitted to take all the risks that Vorkosigan usually can’t. It’s an adrenaline rush that Miles finds addicting - and will eventually lead to some very bad decisions in later books. For now it’s going to result in him diving into his cover whole-heartedly with all the bad decisions that might accompany it. Having Gregor in MoM will only drive that need to stay as Naismith even higher. Connecting Naismith to Vorkosigan is a bad idea; exposing the Emperor is even worse.
POWER:
Liege Relationships: Identical to Gregor’s power, Miles has a telepathic link with anyone he has a formal liege relationship with. In theory this includes anyone he swears in as an armsman or woman; in practice, it means that he and Gregor will have their own private telepathic link if they both get in. There are some caveats to the power. The relationship must be known by both parties - no tricking anyone into gaining telepathic access to their mind. Emotions are strongest, though specific messages can be sent. Both parties can close off the link with practice. And - most importantly, it only works if the agreement is made with full knowledge of each other’s true identities. Mostly this will apply for Miles, since he’ll be in full Admiral Naismith mode (and reluctant to give out his Lord Vorkosigan name), but it applies in reverse as well. A link made under aliases does NOT work.
An appropriate permissions post will be put up for this power when and if Miles includes anyone else in on his link. Links can be broken by the person under Miles at any time; Miles himself can’t break off a link without their permission.
Warp Pipes: Miles can teleport instantly between two points … as long as they are connected by pipes. Sinks, baths, toilets, open manholes, whatever - if there’s an open point where he is, then he can pop out at any other end connected to it. In practice this means that he’s basically limited to teleporting within the city (unless it’s all one big megalopolis with connected sewage pipes). He can take along anything he can hold, including up to two people (one per hand). However, taking additional stuff down the drains is … well, draining. Anything or anyone who goes with him ends up absolutely soaked, so it’s not a good way to transport delicate documents. The water is always clean, at least, though you better believe he doesn’t want to risk sewer pipes if he can help it. That just seems unpleasant.
Permission will be asked before taking anyone along on a teleportation jaunt. Other PCs are welcome to resist or be immune to a teleport, especially if he’s trying to use his power aggressively.
However, this is going to be replaced by...
Bird Form: Miles can shape shift into the form of a small American kestrel. That's really all there is to it! He'll need to practice some to get it down pat, but once he does he'll be able to shift freely between bird form and human form with very little effort at all. The change doesn't have a strict time limit (although it will take practice to get comfortable enough to extend it past a few hours at a time.) The change affects only him, and his bird form is the only form he gets. Injuries translate back to his human form and vice versa. So a broken wing means he comes back with a broken arm, and a broken arm means he's gonna have trouble flying. All clothes and minor equipment (up to a small backpack or weapon) meld into his body and are inaccessible but do reappear after he returns to human form. Anything that's too big is unaffected.
Size Manipulation: Miles can adjust his size up to about 6-7 feet and down to a couple inches in height. He can also use this power to alter his proportions somewhat (like uncurving his spine into a more natural shape) but otherwise can’t make any non-size related modifications. In theory Miles could go taller than a normal human, but in practice his bone density issues make it wildly painful to make himself any bigger than his normal diminutive baseline - even a relatively normal size is painful. Smaller is much, much more comfortable. It takes energy to shift his size but not necessarily to hold it; he has comfortable landing spots at certain intervals where he can stay more or less indefinitely if he wants to. He really won’t want to, is the key. He’ll be more frustrated by how he can’t be a normal height all the time.
Like with his teleportation, anything Miles is wearing or holding comes along with him. They’re also linked to his current size, meaning an item he’s holding doesn’t suddenly return to full size just because he drops it. He can also take along up to two people; in fact, he doesn’t really get much of a choice on that one until he gets really good control over his powers. If you’re touching him when he shifts size, you’re coming along whether he wants you to or not. People follow the same rules as equipment, AKA they’re linked to his size and follow what he’s doing until he pops back up to his normal baseline, even if he’s let go of them. Within reason, anyway. Resisting greatly increases the possibility of breaking the effect, as does the amount of time the power is in effect. tl;dr he can’t just keep somebody tiny forever. Eventually it wears off no matter what Miles does.
Permission will also be asked before using his power on anyone else. Also resistable, etc.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ And here is the infamous network. Miles has heard quite a bit about it during his introduction to this world; it seems almost anticlimactic to discover it’s a rudimentary version of his own world’s communication network. All on one planet, significantly slower than the speed of light…
But no superluminal distances needing covered either. Hmm. That will take getting used to.
The viewscreen is angled such that Miles’ unusual stature is nearly invisible. The sharp-eyed might notice the back of his chair being higher than his head, but otherwise he looks quite professional in his neat gray uniform. Very nearly the mercenary fleet admiral he is - is pretending to be - a little bit of both. The line between Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith is a thin one. To assume the latter identity, all he really has to do is unfold a little and be more than himself. He greets the feed with a bright, genuine smile. ]
Good morning - afternoon? Ah, the joys of all being on one planet. My name is Miles Naismith. Admiral of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. [ A beat; the smile doesn’t waver. ] Alas, I seem to be without both mercenaries and fleet at the moment.
I’m not entirely convinced by this whole registering idea, though. Tell me - those of you who are registered, why do you do it? Ideals? Practicality? Adrenaline?
[ He can understand any one of those reasons, but it’s the middle one he’s most concerned with. He’s not after anyone who chooses of their own free will to serve the government here. No, he wants to know why someone might feel forced to serve against their will. Those are the reasons he wants to target while rebuilding his mercenary group. There should be a real alternative… It’s a worthy thing to focus on, he figure. Just bombastic enough to suit a mercenary admiral - though, he’d be attempting much the same even if he had introduced himself as Lord Vorkosigan.
He shifts a bit to say something else - and winces. When he lifts one hand, the source of his pain becomes clear: his left wrist is encased in a bright red soft cast. Because of course Miles has managed to break something within the first twelve hours of arriving. Bad luck and brittle bones do not mix well. ]
And - er, are there any healers who are interested in work? I could really use someone dedicated to handling broken bones on a regular basis …
[ Not that he knows how to pay them in anything except thanks. But since when has he let that stop him? ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Miles’ TDM threads: http://etcelsior.dreamwidth.org/33908.html?thread=22770548#cmt22770548
FINAL NOTES:
As you probably guessed from all that info up there, Miles has incredibly brittle bones! He will be breaking a lot of them. So many. As he progresses in canon, though, he’ll eventually have them replaced with synthetics.
I’d like Miles to come in with his grandfather’s seal dagger and a small stunner. The dagger is just pretty and sharp; the stunner has a couple charges max before he has to get one of the engineers to charge it back up for him. It’s just an extra-effective taser.
NAME: Rho
AGE: 30
JOURNAL: galatea @ DW
IM / EMAIL: ishidaaaugh @ gmail
PLURK: katoptron
RETURNING: Yep! I play Hiro and Nico.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Miles Vorkosigan
CHARACTER AGE: 20
CANON ORIGIN: Vorkosigan Saga
CHRONOLOGY: For now, Miles is being taken directly after the end of Vor Game, the second major Miles book. Later on he’ll get updated with more canon.
CLASS: Not villainous - definitely a heroic type - but probably not keen on registering either. Likely to become Unsettled.
HOUSING: If Gregor Vorbarra also gets in this round, please house them together! Otherwise no preferences.
BACKGROUND: Miles has a lot of canon over many books and novellas. Fortunately each of them have their own wiki pages with a reasonably complete summary for each. The books that need covering as of Miles canon pull point:
Barrayar
Miles is a fetus throughout most of this book, but there’s important history that affects him directly. Important points:
- Miles’ mother, Cordelia Naismith (Vorkosigan), is a raging badass and should not be underestimated in the slightest, despite Barrayar being a backwards feudal space Russia that doesn’t think women are people.
- Miles’ father, Aral Vorkosigan, is the Lord Regent while Gregor is still bitty due to Gregor’s grandfather entrusting the position to him before his death.
- Early on in the regency, Aral is forced to uphold an ancient law punishing duel attempts with death; failing to do so would have undermined his leadership. This results in the lord father of said capitally punished dueler to get revenge: attempted murder of Aral and Cordelia via soltoxin. Fortunately soltoxin has an antidote that can be administered quickly for a complete recovery. Unfortunately, said antidote has the side effects of decalcifying fetus’ bones. Miles’ bones.
- Cordelia is given an emergency c-section and Miles is transferred to a uterine replicator (exactly what it sounds like) to continue gestating with the help of doctors to try and give him some kind of body structure above gelatinous baby cube. Barrayar has an unfortunate prejudice against possible mutations, however, and Miles’ grandfather is not pleased with the possibility of having a mutant for a grandson and heir. He encourages an abortion - and then attempts to force one after Cordelia and Aral refuse. This is not the first time he will try to kill a young Miles. Obviously, this deeply fractures Miles’ grandfather’s relationship with Aral and Cordelia.
- Meanwhile, during all this, a dickhole named Lord Vordarian decides that Aral shouldn’t be regent and that he ought to be the Emperor in truth, with Gregor firmly under his thumb (or better, dead). The head of security shows up on the Vorkosigans’ doorstep with a tiny Gregor and promptly dies; they have to protect the Emperor and wrest control of the Empire back from Vordarian. Thus begins the Vordarian Pretendership.
- Miles’ uterine replicator is taken captive along with many other family members of Aral’s political group/resistance/rightful government. Cordelia manages to get to the Imperial Palace, rescue Miles, and then come back with Vordarian’s head in a bag. Pretendership over.
- Miles is eventually born, but the whole “getting kidnapped” thing interrupted his treatment badly. He is born with extremely fragile bones and significant developmental delays in general. There’s a ton of surgery in this kid’s future.
The Warrior’s Apprentice
- Miles is 17 now, preparing to take the exams to get into the one career he’s wanted all his life: to serve in the Imperial Military. He aced his regular tests but unfortunately failed the physical at the very first wall due to shattering his legs upon landing. His grandfather dies that night, presumably disappointed at his grandson not getting in.
- With his life already over, he decides that the best thing to do is skip off to Beta Colony (his mother’s ultra-liberal homeworld) and at least try and make his childhood crush, Elena Bothari, appreciate him a little more. His goal is to figure out who Elena’s real mother is and present the information to her. His bodyguard (and Elena’s father) Sergeant Bothari comes along too.
- He ends up accidentally recruiting a depressed jump pilot and a deserter from the Imperial Service, buys a ship, and involves himself in smuggling just to try and pay off the ship in one go.
- Smuggling job doesn’t go as planned. Smuggling jobs never go as planned.
- They wind up taking over the mercenaries that jump their ship, then accidentally joining up with the resistance they were supplying, and things begin to … snowball from there.
- At some point in the middle Miles also finds Elena’s mother, and makes the mistake of presenting her to Elena in front of Bothari. Elena’s mother had been raped by Bothari during a previous war; her mother then shoots and kills Bothari. Miles takes it hard.
- In the end Miles ends up taking over the entire Oseran Free Mercenary Fleet by disrupting their payroll, making instead into the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet.
- Elena marries the deserter; Miles has to get over his first real crush. And then he has to go home and defend himself from charges of treason and/or building an army. All in a day’s work for Miles.
- He also gets into the Imperial Service Academy after all (as a “punishment” to keep him from going back to the mercenaries).
The Mountains of Mourning (Novella)
- Miles is 20, after having recently graduated from the Imperial Service Academy.
- A woman from his district asks for the Count’s help in resolving an infanticide case for a little girl who’d been born with a defect; Aral sends Miles to take care of it instead.
- Miles finds himself learning more about the hill folk in his district - and more importantly, figuring out why he’s doing all this military stuff in the first place. As someone perceived as a mutant, he has to help make sure the world is one that he (and people like him) can live in.
- He finds out that the person who killed the infant was the infant’s grandmother; he rules that the grandmother should be left alive but completely at her daughter’s mercy.
The Vor Game
- Miles is 20; the book starts within a few weeks after Mountains of Mourning.
- He gets his first real assignment: six months on a horrible, frigid ImpMil base in exchange for getting placed on the
Enterprisenewest, shiniest flagship the military has to offer. - Because Miles is Miles, things go wrong. Nearly drowns in frozen mud, pisses off the base commander and assists with mutiny that results in a massive public incident.
- Base commander (Metzov) gets discharged; Miles gets taken in by Imperial Security (the spy branch) because no other branch of the military will take him. Cue months of boredom while he’s kept out of the public eye to make it look like he’s being punished too.
- ImpSec finally lets him go on a spy mission but Miles is forbidden from using his Admiral Naismith persona. Take one guess what he ends up doing.
- Well before that he does manage to make a mess with his assigned persona, including getting thrown in jail. There he runs into Gregor, who attempted suicide and then ran the fuck away from being Emperor for a while.
- Miles understandably panics, because very abruptly he’s the only ImpSec who has the slightest idea where Gregor is, and if anyone else finds Gregor it’s going to be a galactic incident.
- They make their way to Vervain, where they stumble into two things: the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet (taken back over by Oser), Commander Cavilo (the woman who’d gotten Miles arrested to begin with, and also running a rival group of mercenaries), and Metzov (the crazy base commander Miles had pissed off).
- Cavilo’s true purpose is to draw the Cetagandans into the system and start an intergalactic war. And then Gregor falls in her lap, and she decides to do all that PLUS become the Empress of Barrayar.
- Gregor, fortunately, is too smart for this. And so is Miles. Between the two of them, they manage to pull Gregor out and shut Cavilo down.
- Unfortunately the Cetagandans are still coming … so Miles has to retake his mercenary fleet using nothing but his own wits again and hold off the much larger army until Gregor can come through with actual reinforcements.
- A war is averted, Miles’ mercenaries are restored to his control, and Admiral Naismith is made into one of Miles’ permanent personas. They carry out missions too dangerous or too politically delicate for the Barrayaran military service to handle directly.
PERSONALITY:
Miles is a young man who has spent his life bashing his head against the limitations set for him. Fortunately for him he’s wildly intelligent, with a strategic mind unparalleled by anyone except maybe his father. Miles spent (and continues to spend) most of his energy in stubbornly proving himself capable of doing anything anyone says he can’t do. Putting a wall in front of him is like waving a red flag in front of a bull - his immediate instinct is to run headlong into it. It’s part of why he first decided he was going to join the Imperial Military Service in the first place, despite his physical limitations. Everything in his life told him that he wouldn’t manage it without severe nepotism (as had been traditional for Vor lords like him previously), so he insisted on making it in just like everyone else. And failing at it, only to come back with a mercenary army instead. Telling Miles Vorkosigan not to do something is the quickest way to get it done.
Much of this stems from the fact that Miles had to fight just to survive in Barrayar’s culture. Many people on his planet - including his own grandfather - viewed anyone with physical defects as being less than human and unworthy of using up Barrayar’s resources. His own grandfather tried to kill him at least twice, with a possible third incident prompting Miles’ parents to keeping their son accompanied by a bodyguard at all times. Miles is someone who has had to prove, over and over again, that he is worthy of existence. That leaves a mark after a while, in the form of some crippling self-worth issues. Of course, his parents were as supportive as possible, never laying expectations on him that they thought he couldn’t meet and giving him enough space to find whatever life might make him happy. But everyone else … Miles is so used to being on the defense that he’s made it all into a grand offensive strategy: strike first, make himself completely unable to be ignored, make himself into a hero that can buck the expectations people have for him. He has a lot of issues with not ending up as the monstrous, hunchbacked figured from Barrayaran fiction. Miles is fundamentally a good person, and twists himself around backwards to prove it sometimes.
Miles’ limitation-busting tendencies is another reason why Miles is as good of a strategist as he is. Having been surrounded by tumultuous politics and people who are likely to start out with negative prejudices towards him, Miles has a very acute sense of whether someone is trustworthy or not. He's an excellent judge of character - mostly, with a few exceptions - and moves to surround himself with talented people as quickly as he can. If Miles can’t do it, he’ll find someone who can. Make it happen anyway. And if he still can’t win, then it’s time to shift the battlefield onto ground that he can hold.
Unfortunately, when you’re used to thinking of everything as a battlefield, then everything you do become a battle tactic. Miles really isn’t used to making normal friends. He’s used to collecting people, or growing up with them; he feels the need to trick or trap people into wanting to be close to him. Completely ignoring the thought that he might just be worthy of friendship all on his own merits, without any of the manipulation. Miles likes to make his goals and his friends’ goals just happen to align to keep them as close as possible. This backfires SPECTACULARLY on more than one occasion. It’s ultimately the cause of Sergeant Bothari’s death in Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles, trying to impress his crush, puts Bothari face to face with the woman he raped, with drastic consequences. Later he tries to manipulate his future wife into spending time with him, also with drastic (but less fatal) results. This is the ugly side of Miles Vorkosigan: manipulative because he can’t quite trust himself to be a real person.
It probably comes as no surprise by now that Miles is a person of extremes. Wild, manic upswings are balanced out by massive downturns. Miles-the-twenty-year-old is still in the throes of all this. When he’s up, he’s pacing and throwing himself at wild goose chases, with no thought as to where that road is going to lead him. Staying in MoM is both going to fuel this urge as well as give him quite a lot of trouble because of it. If he makes a mission for himself, he’ll hurl himself into it with all his might; without it, he’ll be massively unhappy and spin his wheels. Probably some mixture of the two will be how he handles things in practice. Having Gregor in the game with him will be a massive boon in that respect. He is kind of the only member of ImpSec anywhere remotely close enough to keep the Emperor safe.
The downswings, though, are deeply unpleasant. The downside of being a master strategist means that Miles takes his all of his mistakes exceptionally hard, no matter how difficult they would have been to prevent in the moment. Enough guilt weighing him down and Miles goes into a tailspin that takes a very long time to recover from. Sometimes the two sides of his personality mix in alarmingly destructive ways. When Miles was younger, he reacted to rejection by his peers by going out, riding the wildest horse he could, and having the worst accident he possibly could. Other incidents have prompted suicide attempts of varying severity. Miles can be keenly self-destructive when he wants to be. His saving grace is that he rarely wants to drag anyone else down with him; wanting to save others is what often what drags him back up out of his funks. In MoM, wanting to protect Gregor is going to be his saving grace if they both get in; if not, he’ll have to find other important people to focus on when he can’t give enough to himself.
Miles takes oaths and loyalty incredibly seriously. Part of this is due to the Vor culture, which is based on oaths of fealty; a Vor’s word is binding. Vorkosigans take particular pride in that, so a promise made by Miles is a promise made unto death. This does not mean Miles won’t find loopholes … His reports back to Gregor and his superiors as a member of ImpSec have a number of very interesting omissions most of the time. But never an outright lie. (Until a later book, anyway, and that is an unmitigated disaster.) He also shows exceptional loyalty to taking care of the people he’s responsible for. His first concern after a successful mission with the Dendarii is to make sure medical expenses are paid for - up to and including a new face for a soldier who’d had her face melted off during one of his missions. He’ll be a good count one day. After he’s done being the little Admiral, anyway…
Both Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith are vitally important aspects of himself. Vorkosigan, Miles’ desire to be a productive part of his society and ultimately make it better for people like himself; Naismith, Miles’ expansive and limitless potential, pushed beyond all reasonable limits. Those around Miles comment that being Naismith is being more of himself than Vorkosigan normally allows himself, and that’s true. Naismith is all the extremes of Miles’ normal personality dialed up to eleven. Naismith is also a personality that is permitted to take all the risks that Vorkosigan usually can’t. It’s an adrenaline rush that Miles finds addicting - and will eventually lead to some very bad decisions in later books. For now it’s going to result in him diving into his cover whole-heartedly with all the bad decisions that might accompany it. Having Gregor in MoM will only drive that need to stay as Naismith even higher. Connecting Naismith to Vorkosigan is a bad idea; exposing the Emperor is even worse.
POWER:
Liege Relationships: Identical to Gregor’s power, Miles has a telepathic link with anyone he has a formal liege relationship with. In theory this includes anyone he swears in as an armsman or woman; in practice, it means that he and Gregor will have their own private telepathic link if they both get in. There are some caveats to the power. The relationship must be known by both parties - no tricking anyone into gaining telepathic access to their mind. Emotions are strongest, though specific messages can be sent. Both parties can close off the link with practice. And - most importantly, it only works if the agreement is made with full knowledge of each other’s true identities. Mostly this will apply for Miles, since he’ll be in full Admiral Naismith mode (and reluctant to give out his Lord Vorkosigan name), but it applies in reverse as well. A link made under aliases does NOT work.
An appropriate permissions post will be put up for this power when and if Miles includes anyone else in on his link. Links can be broken by the person under Miles at any time; Miles himself can’t break off a link without their permission.
Permission will be asked before taking anyone along on a teleportation jaunt. Other PCs are welcome to resist or be immune to a teleport, especially if he’s trying to use his power aggressively.
However, this is going to be replaced by...
Bird Form: Miles can shape shift into the form of a small American kestrel. That's really all there is to it! He'll need to practice some to get it down pat, but once he does he'll be able to shift freely between bird form and human form with very little effort at all. The change doesn't have a strict time limit (although it will take practice to get comfortable enough to extend it past a few hours at a time.) The change affects only him, and his bird form is the only form he gets. Injuries translate back to his human form and vice versa. So a broken wing means he comes back with a broken arm, and a broken arm means he's gonna have trouble flying. All clothes and minor equipment (up to a small backpack or weapon) meld into his body and are inaccessible but do reappear after he returns to human form. Anything that's too big is unaffected.
Size Manipulation: Miles can adjust his size up to about 6-7 feet and down to a couple inches in height. He can also use this power to alter his proportions somewhat (like uncurving his spine into a more natural shape) but otherwise can’t make any non-size related modifications. In theory Miles could go taller than a normal human, but in practice his bone density issues make it wildly painful to make himself any bigger than his normal diminutive baseline - even a relatively normal size is painful. Smaller is much, much more comfortable. It takes energy to shift his size but not necessarily to hold it; he has comfortable landing spots at certain intervals where he can stay more or less indefinitely if he wants to. He really won’t want to, is the key. He’ll be more frustrated by how he can’t be a normal height all the time.
Like with his teleportation, anything Miles is wearing or holding comes along with him. They’re also linked to his current size, meaning an item he’s holding doesn’t suddenly return to full size just because he drops it. He can also take along up to two people; in fact, he doesn’t really get much of a choice on that one until he gets really good control over his powers. If you’re touching him when he shifts size, you’re coming along whether he wants you to or not. People follow the same rules as equipment, AKA they’re linked to his size and follow what he’s doing until he pops back up to his normal baseline, even if he’s let go of them. Within reason, anyway. Resisting greatly increases the possibility of breaking the effect, as does the amount of time the power is in effect. tl;dr he can’t just keep somebody tiny forever. Eventually it wears off no matter what Miles does.
Permission will also be asked before using his power on anyone else. Also resistable, etc.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ And here is the infamous network. Miles has heard quite a bit about it during his introduction to this world; it seems almost anticlimactic to discover it’s a rudimentary version of his own world’s communication network. All on one planet, significantly slower than the speed of light…
But no superluminal distances needing covered either. Hmm. That will take getting used to.
The viewscreen is angled such that Miles’ unusual stature is nearly invisible. The sharp-eyed might notice the back of his chair being higher than his head, but otherwise he looks quite professional in his neat gray uniform. Very nearly the mercenary fleet admiral he is - is pretending to be - a little bit of both. The line between Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith is a thin one. To assume the latter identity, all he really has to do is unfold a little and be more than himself. He greets the feed with a bright, genuine smile. ]
Good morning - afternoon? Ah, the joys of all being on one planet. My name is Miles Naismith. Admiral of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. [ A beat; the smile doesn’t waver. ] Alas, I seem to be without both mercenaries and fleet at the moment.
I’m not entirely convinced by this whole registering idea, though. Tell me - those of you who are registered, why do you do it? Ideals? Practicality? Adrenaline?
[ He can understand any one of those reasons, but it’s the middle one he’s most concerned with. He’s not after anyone who chooses of their own free will to serve the government here. No, he wants to know why someone might feel forced to serve against their will. Those are the reasons he wants to target while rebuilding his mercenary group. There should be a real alternative… It’s a worthy thing to focus on, he figure. Just bombastic enough to suit a mercenary admiral - though, he’d be attempting much the same even if he had introduced himself as Lord Vorkosigan.
He shifts a bit to say something else - and winces. When he lifts one hand, the source of his pain becomes clear: his left wrist is encased in a bright red soft cast. Because of course Miles has managed to break something within the first twelve hours of arriving. Bad luck and brittle bones do not mix well. ]
And - er, are there any healers who are interested in work? I could really use someone dedicated to handling broken bones on a regular basis …
[ Not that he knows how to pay them in anything except thanks. But since when has he let that stop him? ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Miles’ TDM threads: http://etcelsior.dreamwidth.org/33908.html?thread=22770548#cmt22770548
FINAL NOTES:
As you probably guessed from all that info up there, Miles has incredibly brittle bones! He will be breaking a lot of them. So many. As he progresses in canon, though, he’ll eventually have them replaced with synthetics.
I’d like Miles to come in with his grandfather’s seal dagger and a small stunner. The dagger is just pretty and sharp; the stunner has a couple charges max before he has to get one of the engineers to charge it back up for him. It’s just an extra-effective taser.