Keith Sylva

Keith is a PC played by Dadragon6 within the Arcadia Complex.

Ausse Argyris
Gender:	Male
Race:	Human
Age:	30
Faction:	Independent
Occupation:	Informant, Infiltrator
Pseudonym:	Keith Sylva

Physical Appearance

Keith stands at a total of 5' 10“, or about 178 cm in the more widely accepted metric system. He has a mildly tanned skin as a result of spending so many years living in an arid climate, eyes the color of amber, and short wavy hair dyed a sandy blonde (though naturally dark gray). Thanks to military training regimen, Keith is physically fit, as is the standard for any soldier.

Much preferring practicality over fashion, Keith's usual attire consists of a mix and match of different pieces of clothing and equipment. The hood of his desert scarf often covers his head to both provide him concealment and protection from sunlight, but when not in use it can be found hanging loose from the back of his neck alongside his goggles on the opposite side. His beige travel poncho drapes to his left side, covering both his left arm and the holster on his hip where Keith keeps his revolver. Underneath the poncho, he wears a bandolier on top of his old military-grade ballistic vest, and as a final layer of clothing he wears a sleeveless white shirt. On both of his arms, he wears linen elbow sleeves and fingerless cotton gloves - on his left arm, however, is a prototype cloaking device strapped to use as a bracer. Further down, Keith's choice of trousers are a pair of camouflage cargo pants, tucked into his gum rubber boots. Finally, his sniper rifle is slung around his back when not needed, and he makes no efforts to hide its presence. All of this gives him a distinct “desert wanderer” look.

Personality

Keith is surprisingly outgoing for someone of his character, in stark contrast to his previously serious and single-minded attitude from when he used to be a soldier. Over time, he realized that a life spent worrying about every intricacy of the mundane is quite a dull one, and has developed a more laid-back attitude and a personal philosophy focused on the “now”. As such, he has learned to forgive his past self, and adopted a few mannerisms from his old life which he considered to be beneficial - though he can't change the things he's done, he can work towards being a better person.

He isn't without faults, however, as he will refuse to kill or handle weapons extremely susceptible to inflicting lethal blows; still suffering from a minor case of PTSD, being forced to do so would push Keith into a catatonic state (this also renders him incapable of ending someone's suffering by means of mercy killing). Though he does not practice lethality and can be quite different in person, he still tries to keep up a reputation of being sly and dangerous.

Biography

The Apprentice

Being nothing but modest laborers, his parents had always lived a poor lifestyle - their earnings were scarce and paychecks far in-between. For them, having food on the table was a divine miracle, and all but the cheapest assets were out of reach. Their financial situation was so dire that, when Ausse was born, they were unable to sustain him, and so they were forced to search for someone who could and beg them to adopt their son.

And find someone they did. Maximilian Argyris, military colonel - and Ausse's uncle. He pledged to take the boy under his wing, but only if they would allow him to train him in the art of warfare to ensure him a future career in the army. Having no better option available, the parents accepted, and shortly after transferred legal guardianship to Maximilian.

Life with his uncle wasn't so bad. Despite his rank, the colonel had a warm and approachable personality, that of a man who wanted nothing less than the best for his nephew. His duties as a commissioned officer kept him busy, however, and Max was seldom to be found at home. Nevertheless, there was always food to be found on the table, and whenever he did return home he'd take some time off to check in on and hang out with Ausse. Their favorite game to play together was chess, which Max always managed to win despite his young nephew's futile efforts to strategize against a military senior.

Ausse was home-schooled for the most part, taught by the numerous tutors his uncle would hire to cover several different subjects, including languages, mathematics, social sciences and, later on, marksmanship. In his 12th birthday, the young Argyris received an air gun as a gift from his uncle, and from then on started to receive marksmanship and gun handling classes - according to Max, these would prepare and give him an advantage over the competition when the time was right to enlist, though they also served the purpose of helping him refine his aim from an early age.

At the age of 18, Ausse enlisted in the military and was accepted not too late after - much to his uncle's joy and pride. He received additional military training in how to be proficient with a gun and unarmed combat, as well as which way to react during general and specific combat scenarios alike, such as close quarters and hand-to-hand combat, and urban and guerrilla warfare. The schedules were strict and the drills unforgiving - these served as a kind of quality control, where only the best would persevere and the weak would often fall behind.

The Soldier

Due in both parts to his previous training and his uncle's influence, Ausse swiftly climbed through ranks to achieve that of sergeant. At the age of 21, he was put in charge of his own squad, labeled primarily as a special operations team. Fittingly, most of the squad members were skilled at moving around unnoticed and trained to reliably get into places they didn't belong - which was why they were assigned to a low-profile team in the first place. Ausse never truly understood why he was put in charge of such a squad considering he had no previous expertise in stealth, but ultimately resorted to think of it as a decision made by Maximilian to keep him safe from the front lines.

At the age of 22, Ausse's squad was dispatched to assist in the war effort against a rebelling faction. They were led by a ruthless leader, who managed to find equally bloodthirsty people to join their chain of command and support the uprising. The rank and file, however? They only ever sought the opportunity for a better future, and many of them were opposed to fighting a violent war… but they never had a choice. In the eyes of the higher ups, if you weren't an insurgent, then you were a traitor - and treason was punished by execution.

The squad's target was supposedly an important rebel communications center. Their mission was to sneak in, steal any important intel, rig the place with explosives, and report back to base. A straightforward objective, but if only it were that simple. Despite their lack of ferocity, the rebels weren't fools, and so the comms camp had numerous tight patrol schedules on top of near constant vigilance - they knew how important that center was to them, and weren't afraid of going the extra mile in precautionary measures.

It was never meant to be an easy task. Most of Ausse's squad members were captured by jumpy guards, taken into custody, and then promptly interrogated for information. In the end, out of the eight soldiers in the squad, only he remained hidden, away from sight - of course, he never attempted to infiltrate the base before then. In order to both rescue his team and complete the mission they were given, he had to rely on a slightly different approach.

From atop a nearby hill was where the young sergeant decided to test if his aim was true, if all those years of training had indeed paid off. Unfolding his sniper's bipod, he propped it up against the ground while lying prone himself, and peeked through the scope. He first caught sight of an unfortunate guard near the rear entrance - his first target, the first real person he would have to kill. Lining the reticle with the guard's head was easy enough - it'd be a shot through the skull, a mercifully quick death. The hardest part was pulling the trigger. The few moments Ausse took to ease his breathing seemed to last an eternity, until finally, swallowing down his anxiety, he slowly pulled the trigger…

…and a curtain of blood splattered across the entrance as the guard's body fell limp and lifeless.

No amount of training can truly prepare a man for the feeling that comes after taking someone else's life. Most say it feels hollow, while lunatics may claim it to be euphoric. Ausse felt something that he could only describe as a mix of both regret and horror. That man didn't deserve to die - he was only doing what he was ordered to, forced to, in order to guarantee his own survival. He probably wanted nothing else but to be at home with his family. And now, because of Ausse, that family would forever await the return of a father who would never arrive. He couldn't, of course. He was dead.

But Sgt Argyris still had a job to do. His squad wasn't going to rescue itself, and so that responsibility fell on his shoulders instead. Inside the comms center, Ausse would regret having to kill many more rebels that stood between him and his squad. A few were rightfully angry and desired his death, and yet others were horrified. The higher his kill count, the more distant he became, and soon enough his feelings of dread would be replaced entirely by self-disgust. In the end, when his squad was rescued, the intel was secured, the camp was rigged to explode, and all was said and done, he could feel nothing else but the deep, burning pain of regret stabbing his heart again and again. It was unbearable.

That night, when everyone else slept soundly and peacefully back at the base, Ausse was restless. Muttering a silent apology to his uncle, he vowed to never again fire a gun with the intent to kill, before gathering his things and running away in the middle of the night.

The Coward

Ausse would continue to be on the run for what felt like… hours? Days? Weeks, maybe. In truth, time did not matter for him anymore - only the distance which he could put between himself and his old life. He refused to look back. The mere thought of acknowledging such an option still existed disgusted him to the very core of his being. And so he alone fled, crying and wailing under the torrential rain that accompanied him in the blackened darkness of midnight.

When he finally came to his senses, Ausse found himself making a bed out of the coarse sand. In his hysterical state, he must have ran into an arid region. Now that the “escape” part of his plan was a relative success, his next task would be to find somewhere else to go, a place where he'd be able to start a new life. And, just his luck, he managed to catch a glimpse of what seemed to be a desert metropolis in the horizon. Disregarding all common sense and any thoughts of it being a mirage, the deserter stepped forward, his boot sinking into the dry ground - the first step of many towards a hopefully brighter future.

It was in the city of Sillogos, in the Auric Desert, where Ausse would eventually come to discover, practice, and sell his trade. Ironically, his proficiency in subterfuge would be a skill born out of pure necessity rather than training, having to hide from authorities on the lookout for the rumored deserter that had arrived on the city not too long ago. Of course, while one can indefinitely avoid the police, nobody can hide from the criminal underworld forever. The Sillogos mafia would eventually reach out to Ausse - they had a proposal. If he were to use his newfound stealth to run a few errands for them, then they wouldn't turn him in and would even help him settle into a new life in the metropolis. Having no other choice, he accepted.

From that day onward, “Sgt” Argyris became a regular contractor for the mafia and began life anew under the fake moniker of “Keith Sylva”. With enough time and a few favors, he was able to acquire a modified, non-lethal arsenal through the mafia's black market contracts, along with a few pieces of equipment to help in his future infiltration endeavors. Now armed with an arsenal he felt comfortable using, Keith took on bounty hunting alongside intel theft as a job - though he will only ever accept work on bounties which he's be able to complete without any casualties done by his own hand.

Items

Revolver (S&W 29): holds six rounds per cylinder. Modified to fire focused energy blasts—these can shock organic beings and disable light machinery. The cylinder itself is a generator which transforms kinetic energy into electrical energy, and thus the reloading process is done through spinning the cylinder to generate enough charge to be used as ammunition.

Sniper rifle (Barrett M82): holds ten rounds per magazine. Modified to accept general anesthetic darts as ammunition in addition to HEIAP shells.

Grenades (EMP, stun, smoke): two of each stored on his bandolier.

Goggles: can switch between night vision and infrared settings.

Cloaking device: strapped to his left arm as a bracer. User becomes transparent when active. Functions through use of a light refraction field, controlling the electromagnetic radiation around the user to shield them from view.

Portable chess set: Keith can often be seen staring blankly into space while playing chess, as if reminiscing about something.

A hollow, deactivated Overseer's skull. Obtained within Alipier Observatory during Episode 2: Union.

Skills

Unarmed combat: military training regimen does wonders for your physique - and it's especially useful when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. Keith is able to effectively disarm and subdue an opponent at close range, and knock their lights out if necessary.

Marksmanship: it does wonders for your aim, too! Keith is a gunslinging expert with his revolver, and can accurately hit targets with his sniper rifle up to two thousand meters away. Unfortunately, the effective range of his rifle is severely diminished due to the type of ammo he regularly uses - darts.

Stealth: once his uncle's pride, now a runaway. In contrast to his lack of proficiency at it while acting with his squad, Keith learned the art of stealth due pure necessity of avoiding the authorities after him. His gum rubber boots assist in muffling his footsteps, while his cloaking device turns him transparent - though the distortion of light caused by this can be noticed by the more perceptive individuals.

OOC Notes

This page was originally created by Dadragon6 on Fri 17-08-18.