Daroga

Username: Daroga

Character: Phoenix Orris Nirvana Mercer

Age: 21

Gender: Female

Occupation: Stagehand, Light and Sound Technician

Appearance: When at work or lost in one of her many projects Phoenix is often found covered in dirt or grease. But after a lifetime of being mistaken for one of the guys when she's not at work Phoenix makes it quite clear that she's still one of the girls. A lifetime of activity in her father's bohemian paradise has granted her with an athletic physique that might not win her any bombshell awards but when shown off is guaranteed to make the boys look twice.

Personality: Phoenix likes to think that she got the best of both worlds in the traits she inherited from her parents, and she wouldn't be far wrong. From her mother she inherited a heaping portion of common sense and an innate sense of satisfaction with herself often missing from girls her age. She doesn't spend long hours in front of the mirror worrying over how she looks as she is blessed with the confidence to be comfortable in her own skin. She was also blessed with a the ability to express herself freely and articulately, though perhaps sometimes she verges on saying exactly what she thinks a bit too bluntly. On the other hand from her father she learned a deep appreciation for living in the moment and seeing life as an adventure that she's hopes will never end. She dreads the mundane and looks for mystery and excitement in even the most routine situation. She is passionate and sometimes pensive, but more than willing to pull herself out of her own little world to meet someone new. Phoenix was been stubbornly independent her whole life, knowing who she was and what she loved without ever having to be told. All she wants out of life is the opportunity to truly experience it. Which is perhaps why she's so afraid of settling down and picking her path in life. If she sets the future in stone what more is there to look forward to?

History: Phoenix comes from a proud history of shrugging off the traditional wisdom and proudly thinking for one's self, and in the case of her parents the more revolutionary the thought the better. Margaret Spencer and Andrew Mercer met during their college days in the turbulent decade of love in California. They were passionate for their causes and passionate for each other, infatuated by each other's ambition to change the world an desperately longing for the fulfillment of the promise of social change. In short they were hippies. Margaret was thrid year law student with a sharp mind and sharper tongue ready to battle for her own precieved ideal of what it meant to be a truly just society. Andrew was working towards his docorate in archeology. Imaginitive and intelligent he preferred to try and to bring new enlightment to a world gone mad by using the examples he had seen in ancient societies on a precipice of history like the one they were living in. He personally found more than a small amount of enlightment in deep congress with his dear friend Mary Jane.

But as the flame of activism began to diminish the yougn couple became disillusioned not with each other but with the fickle nature of all of their so called brethern in the cause. It didn't take much for them to decide that the utopia they hoped for was eluding them. So together they set out on the road to see and experience as much of the world as they could, hoping to avoid the reality that was descending on them bleakly. Eventually they ended up in Australia where Andrew fell in love with studying the native aboriginal tribes and Margaret found a job with a conservation society, fighting the good fight she'd always dreamed on a small scale.

Over the next two and half decades life changed drastically for the small family. They moved away from the smaller rural communities they had first fell in love with so that Andrew could taking a teaching position in at a university in one of the larger cities. Eventually, after Phoenix was born, Margaret took a job at a large corporate law firm, her high idealed work becoming somethign she did on the side instead of full-time. But fundamental things didn't change. Despite that ways that they had changed, Andrew still clinging to his bohemian youth as Margaret embraced the ways of the modern day, they still loved each other very much and worked hard to create a happy and loving enviroment for Phoenix to grow up in.

At a young age it became clear that there was something a bit different about Phoenix. Since as far back as either of her parents can remember Phoenix has loved building stuff and learning about how things work. Some of the earliest victims of her curiosity started with a small computerized counting game sent by her grandparents in the states. Four year old Phoenix wanted to know where the voice came from. Next was an electronic car that the neighbor boy let out of his sight only to rediscover after having been taken apart and put back together with a six year old's skill, a gifted six year old but a six year old none the less. The final straw was when eight year old Phoenix opened up her mother's antique clock, inherited from a long dead great aunt, with wide-eyed joy. But after a few moments of tinkering even she knew that she had met her match and that the clock was far too complicated for her to figure out in one day. The pieces of the clock remained under her bed for nearly a week as she tried with impressive diligence to teach herself the complex mechanics... that is until her mother found the heirloom and decided a proper outlet needed to be found.

Her parents attempts to encourage her enthusiasm while keeping household gadgets in tact began with a subscription to Modern Mechanics and a trip to the library. By the time Phoenix was preparing to leave grade school she was badgering professors at her father's university for remidal Physics lessons. Middle school found her teaching herself mechanics and electronics from old text books. By the time Phoenix reached high school she was a regular at the shop of a mechanic friend of her father's, delighting in the satisfaction that came from getting her hands dirty in her passion as opposed to simply reading it from pristine pages of her now vast library of books and magazines that now included titles from around the world. Her parents encouraged her to enter amatuer engineering contests and before she knew it she was entertaining a host of scholorship offeres to come and study at some of the world's greatest colleges.

A bit overwhelmed and not quite ready to leave behind everything she knew Phoenix attended her first year of school close to home before she began to feel the pressure closing in on her. When she had still been in high school her parents ambitions of her had been simple, they wanted her to go to college and pursue her dream. But now that she had taken that step her mother and father's ideas of just how best to persue that dream diverged greatly. Her mother wanted her to persue engineering or architecture as the safe road to a comfortable and dependable future. The day she had accidently let something slip about how lucritive government military contracts, especially back in America, could be her father had nearly had a coronary. Her dream for her was to ply her skill at breaking new ground for the future of mankind. He forsaw her using her gift to help design the first car to run solely on a completley renewable energy form or designing efficent housing for the tsunami victim or any of the world's hungry. When he hinted at how romantic the idea of her living in a hut in Africa while designing new water systems was the fight had gone on for days.

Finally at the end of her first year of school Phoenix had had enough. All she knew was that she was good at what she did and loved doing it. The idea of planning out the rest of her life was for her far too bitter a pill to swallow just yet. So instead of taking her parent's advice, she took their example. After being home from school for one short week she packed up all of her neccesary belongings and headed for the airport leaving behind a note on the dining room table explaining that she had gone out to see the world like they had. She didn't know when she'd be back or what she would do when she got there. They were free to argue amongst themselves while she was gone but she would prefer if they didn't worry about her, she'd call... eventually.

Since then she has trapsed across the globe, going where ever the whim takes her and making her way with the skilled hands and an adventurous heart.


Care to plot

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