Sergeant Jace Morven
Name Jace Morven
Position Platoon Sergeant
Rank Sergeant
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 38 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6' | |
| Weight | 190lbs | |
| Hair Color | Brown | |
| Eye Color | Blue | |
| Physical Description | Jace is 6’ with a frame forged more from need than choice. He is broad-shouldered, densely muscled with the sort of build that comes from growing up somewhere where violence was a daily thing, as opposed to an occasional event. Years of working within the Federation Ground Forces and his upbringing have left his body conditioned and alert, with every movement calculated and precise. He doesn’t fidget or waste energy, but has a stillness about him. He usually have the look of a man entering a room and assessing a potential threat, not casual conversation. He has sharp, angular features with a strong jawline and high cheekbones, with a narrow nose and pronounced brow. He has blue eyes that seemed steely and usually has a tendency of narrowing his eyes as if he is trying to focus in on a target. He usually has short stubble, not because he thinks it looks good but more because he doesn’t mind and shaving is something that he remembers only when the beard starts annoying him. He wears his dark hair with short sides and a little bit longer on top. He has several marks from a pre-Federation past, such as old scars across his knuckles and forearms, a deeper welt healed jaggedly near his collarbone sand a faint surgical seam behind his right ear. Even if he isn’t intimidating in height or bulk, he usually radiates something colder and harder. In a confrontation, they step back not because of the size but because of the cold, calculated way he steps into their space, as if he can end the fight in seconds if he wished. |
Family
| Father | Unknown | |
| Mother | Unknown |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Jace Morven is emotionally compartmentalized to a degree that approaches pathology. He exhibits traits consistent with chronic PTSD, moral injury, and severe emotional repression. He is mostly quiet and when compelled, often communicates with jarring honesty, fatalistic humour, or blunt observation. Introspection is minimal and often deflected with sarcasm or silence, as it is an uncomfortable thing for him to do. His psychological evaluations describe him as “a mostly stable individual, but brittle”. He is capable of high function under pressure, yet prone to tunnel vision and reactive behaviour when emotionally compromised. Trust does not come easily to Jace. He bonds selectively, typically with commanding officers who demonstrate integrity and protectiveness. When that bond is established, it becomes the central pillar of his emotional framework. Violations of loyalty will lead him to react in a violent way, with no regard to regulations or his own safety. He doesn't consider himself of having friends. Jace is a gay man, but his life circumstances have left him with little opportunity to express that part of himself in any meaningful or safe way. He is not closeted. He neither hides nor denies who he is, but the environments in which he has lived and operated have been emotionally barren and often hostile to vulnerability. Any sexual relationships he has had have been transactional or casual, devoid of the emotional trust or tenderness necessary for deeper connection. He has never experienced a loving partnership, and in private moments, it is one of the few quiet regrets he cannot suppress or rationalise away. Counsellors note that while he has made substantial progress over the years, particularly in team integration and restraint, he remains under long-term observation. He requires structured supervision in emotionally charged environments. When matched with a stable command figure and a clear mission framework, he is a tactical asset of exceptional value. Left unsupervised in complex ethical scenarios, however, he will default to immediate, often violent, resolution. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Strengths: Jace Morven is an effective close-quarters combatant. Trained in zero-gravity, high-gravity, and boarding combat techniques, he possesses a physical precision and ferocity that few can match. He is highly proficient with a wide range of weaponry. In security drills, he routinely outperforms peers, disabling opponents with efficiency bordering on brutality. Mentally, he has an extraordinary tolerance for trauma, pain, and psychological pressure. In moments of extreme crisis, his composure becomes unnerving. He does not panic, hesitate, or flinch. His situational awareness and threat recognition are acute, often identifying anomalies or emerging dangers before others have even registered the problem. His loyalty is another rare strength. Once he commits to a team or commander, he becomes immovably dependable. Manipulation, intimidation, or fear have no hold over him. He is, in the words of one commanding officer, “a guard dog who doesn’t care if you like him, only if you’re a threat.” Weaknesses: Despite his tactical value, Jace’s emotional dysfunction presents ongoing risks, both to his career and team. He has great difficulty expressing or processing grief, guilt, or personal loss in healthy ways. His psychological responses to emotional trauma often bypass cognition entirely, manifesting in immediate, force-driven action. He operates in morally ambiguous spaces, frequently disregarding orders if he believes the outcome justifies it. While this has saved lives, it has also left collateral damage. He is deeply uncomfortable in diplomatic, political, or socially nuanced environments. Protocols and etiquette are secondary to results in his mind, and if given the chance he would interrupt negotiations, disregard chain-of-command niceties, or escalate situations when his threat analysis overrides strategic patience. He remains under long-term psychological observation for markers of antisocial behaviour, specifically emotional detachment and suppressed aggression. Though he has shown marked improvement, it is generally agreed that Jace functions best in a tight, loyal unit under the direction of a commander who understands how to wield his strength and when to rein it in. |
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| Ambitions | Jace has no ambition in rank or prestige. He seeks purpose, loyalty, and a leader worth following. Deep down, he longs for peace, redemption, and the chance to stop fighting. Though he won’t admit it, he hopes for connection and a life beyond being a weapon. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Jace enjoys the ritual of dismantling and reassembling weapons systems, repairing old phasers or even building new weapons. For him, it brings him to a state of almost meditation, especially if he is repeating a task. It has led him to collect disarmed and decommissioned weapons as historical curios, but more for how they are built than what they represent. He also enjoys close quarters martial arts and blade work, treating it like a from of self-regulations and allows him to channel his aggression in a structured way. One of his hobbies has become metal engraving, where he does intricated designs. He has considered expanding it into learning how to craft metal, but at the moment time and patience limits it. He also has become drawn to clockwork mechanisms, something far more delicate than he’d ever envision his hands doing. This is usually done on the holodeck, where he can get what he needs to work on it, yet delete it once done. At one of his counsellors suggestion, he has started low stimulation holodeck programmes, such as quiet wilderness walks, campfire programs and obstacle courses. Due to his dyslexia, Jace has gotten an interest for spoken language, using auditory methods to learn Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian tactical phrases. He can’t read them but speak fluently enough to almost come off as a native. He has also started to listen to music, again a recommendation by counsellors. While not fond of it, he has been drawn into old Earth Blues. While he isn’t engaging directly with it due to not truly understanding the emotion, he is learning to distance himself and just be in the moment. |
| Personal History | Jace Morven was born on Turkana IV, a failed human colony world infamous for its collapse into lawless, factional violence following its severance from the Federation decades earlier. Like many children born into that shattered society, Jace has no birth records, no surviving identification markers, and no confirmed familial ties. He has no memory of his parents' names, only a mist of scattered, half-lucid recollections of a woman whose face he cannot now recall. He also doesn’t know where he got his name for, having recollection of another name as well as spending years being simply addressed as ‘Boy’. From the very beginning, he was raised by necessity, not affection. Violence was the currency of survival, and familial bonds were treated as liabilities. He was taken in by a local militia not out of compassion, but because he was quick with his hands and learned to fix power couplings and maintain weapons with only quick guidance, a harsh word and a cuff on the back of his head if he ever slowed down. In that world, children who couldn’t fight or serve were quickly lost or killed. He never asked questions, not about what he was doing, why, or where the other children who couldn’t keep up went. By age twelve, Jace was functioning as part of a local enclave's security detachment as an armed youth with dead eyes, trained to repair machinery, silence dissent, and keep his head down. There was no room for sentimentality, and certainly no room for love. By fifteen, he could disassemble and reassemble a rifle blindfolded, rewire a failing fusion converter, and carry out "disciplinary" tasks with brutal efficiency. His built, which had added inches on him when the food was more plentiful, was useful for the latter. At seventeen, Jace escaped Turkana IV by stowing away on the SS Hammersmith, a rogue freighter making an unsanctioned landing, most likely to give weapons to one of the factions. Jace was not staying around to find out which faction ended up fully armed. Discovered days later, he was turned over to Starfleet authorities at Starbase 173. Initially flagged for deportation, his fate changed when Lieutenant Ryell Dannic, a Starfleet Security officer, recognized the spark of raw survival intelligence beneath the feral exterior. She took the time to talk to him, seeing the lost boy underneath it. She felt that she couldn’t send him back where he was, so decided to do something with it. With Dannic’s advocacy, Jace was admitted into the Starfleet Enlisted Preparation Program, a humanitarian rehabilitation initiative meant to help people from outside the Federation who had left their worlds and sought asylum from the Federation. Entering Federation society was more traumatic for Jace than growing up on Turkana IV had ever been. Diagnosed with severe dyslexia, PTSD, and socioemotional detachment, he struggled to adapt. Reading and structured learning were nearly insurmountable obstacles until civilian instructor Mora Vellin introduced tactile and visual-based learning methods. Progress was slow but steady. By 2369, he met the minimum standards for Starfleet enlistment, but given his background and his dyslexia, it was felt he wouldn’t be well suited as a security officer. Instead, they recommended him for the Federation Ground Forces, the more military arm of the Federation. It was thought that the stricter discipline and less technical heavy roles there would be better for Jace. Jace began his Federation career in the Federation Ground Forces, where in basic he was known as good at following instructions but bad in barracks. Even so, he did manage to get through it. Afterwards his raw aptitude in weapons maintenance, tactical logistics, and close-quarters engagement drew the attention of his field officers. By the time the Dominion War broke out, Corporal Jace Morven had already spent five years in the Federation Ground Forces. He’d seen live fire before, skirmishes and containment conflicts on border colonies, but nothing had prepared him or anyone else in the Federation for the scale of what followed. He served with the 77th Infantry Battalion, a rapid-deployment assault unit nicknamed the “Black Ash” for the colour of their fatigues and the charred remains they often left behind once the Dominion War started. His specialty in close-quarters engagement and breaching tactics made him a natural pick for advance squads, units expected to take ground first and hold it long enough for the main forces to catch up. The 77th had a reputation even before the war, often scrutinized by the brass for having a high percentage of privates getting hurt or resigning. This was due to a culture of violence fostered by Sergeant Tho, a career trooper who believed that they were all meat for the machine. He had seen the war with Cardassia coming a mile off and made it his mission to make his troopers into obedient drones. Jace was no exception to the treatment. The Dominion did not take prisoners unless they were of value. Jace didn't take any at all. During one of their first ground engagements, none of the Squad warned Sergeant Tho of a sniper. He was the leader of Jace's Squad and him, as well as Corporal Martinez, Pvt. Kerren, Pvt. Banik, Pvt. Terrow and others that eventually be nothing more than whispered names in Jace's dreams, had developed a sense of necessity to survive: their chances of survival would go up drastically if Tho died. No one mourned him, least of them Jace. The chaos of the war meant that someone stepped up to take over leading the squad, not by rank but by reflex. Morven stepped up without a second thought, leading by action and not words. His conduct during the war walked a jagged line between commendation and disciplinary review. One engagement report filed after the re-taking of Izar noted that “while Morven’s results were strategically successful, his methods remain cause for psychological monitoring.” No further detail was added, but unofficial accounts spoke of a Jem’Hadar command post left not simply cleared, but “deliberately annihilated.” When asked about it later, Jace only said, “They were still moving.” When the war ended, he found himself in the same situation as most of the 77th: viewed with a sense of dread. They had been bloody and dirty, their methods not breaking any conventions but walking a line Romulans would have been comfortable with. Emotionally, the war hadn't done much to Jace. He had been damaged before and had welcomed having an actual enemy to turn his anger towards. The vacuum that happened afterwards had left him feel colder than usual, and tempers flared more often. He was moved to the 103rd when the 77th was disbanded. The next years passed with long periods of routine and harsh deployments when needed. He tried to fit in, making aborted efforts to socialise only to find himself unable to follow through. The futility of it all made him fall back onto routines until finally something would snap and he'd end up in the brig. A turning point came when he was transferred to Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, and came under the mentorship of Sergeant Garin Vel, a seasoned Bolian Ground Forces NCO with a reputation for both battlefield excellence and rare emotional acuity. Vel recognized in Jace not just a soldier, but a young man suspended between instinct and isolation. Under Vel's guidance, Jace was trained in urban infiltration, small-unit tactics, and combat psychology, although the latter didn’t really take in actual battle where Jace’s focus would become so pin-pointed that all other thoughts went out. But more importantly, Vel offered the one thing Jace had never known: trust. Their surrogate father-son bond became the bedrock of Jace’s developing sense of duty and internal moral code and he was loyal to a fault when it came to Garin. He never asked questions and would back him up no matter what situation. In 2387, during a counterinsurgency operation on Dovar IX, Vel and the forward squad were ambushed and cut off during a diplomatic compound extraction. Garin was killed and Jace, separated from his platoon, let his rage guide him. He initiated a solo breach through a maintenance tunnel and engaged hostiles independently. In the space of eleven minutes, he neutralized ten enemy combatants, a feat made less impressive since several were later determined to be either surrendering or unarmed. Though he successfully extracted one surviving hostage and prevented the execution of a diplomat, his breach of Federation engagement protocols nearly resulted in a court-martial. Only the posthumous field commendation submitted by Vel prior to his death and a corroborating statement from the hostage saved Jace’s commission. He was reassigned under psychological probation status to Echo Platoon, Special Ordinance Division, where his career entered a quieter, more scrutinized phase, with regular counselling and evaluations. He was seen as a dangerous weapon, a fractured human being caught in a cycle of anger and loss. But he did work on it and showed at least a want to contribute. In 2388, he was transferred to the Federation Ground Forces Detachment on the USS Guinevere, the feeling that a smaller group would make it easier to control him, and the fact they were based on a ship would limit the chances for Jace to take things in his own hands. It was also thought that a Starfleet vessel with assigned counsellors and non-combative interactions would allow Jace to see more in the world and gain new loyalties that might ease his otherwise harsh mentality. |
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| Service Record | 2369–2372 Infantryman and field mechanic, 103rd Rapid Response Battalion 2372-2376 Infantryman, 77th Infantry Rapid Response Battalion 2376–2382 Combat engineer, 103rd Rapid Response Battalion 2382–2385 Security specialist, 71st Expeditionary Detachment 2385–2387 Tactical operative under Sergeant Garin Vel, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion 2387–2388 Infantryman, Echo Platoon, Special Ordinance Division 2388–Pres Platoon Sergeant, 1st Platoon, Alpha Squad, Federation Ground Forces Detachment member |