Created by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane on Aug 15, 2016 @ 10:07pm

JAMES PROPHECY BARTON

James Prophecy Barton

Character Information
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Age: 48

Physical Appearance
Height: 6'6"
Weight: 276 lbs.
Hair Color: Chestnut
Eye Color: Green, flecked with Gray

Physical Description
Barton is very large. He’s received illegal genetic therapy and also works himself strenuously constantly. Once he was lithe and trim, but now he greatly resembles the professional wrestlers of bygone days. Due to this therapy, he also appears at first glance to be several years younger than he actually is. Barton wears a mustache and a beard. Both are long. The beard on his chin is touched with gray, the only readily apparent sign of his age. His torso, legs and left arm to the forearm are badly scarred by burns. His torso bears several additional deep cuts and puckers. Though at the surface he is very handsome, Barton carries an air of anger and tension with him that serves to make him seem quiet and sad, instead of attractive.

Family
Spouse: None
Children: Michael Erickson-Barton (adopted, deceased)
Father: Edward Barton (Former professor of Anthropology Studies - Vulcan Science Academy, Terrorist Leader. Presumed dead.)
Mother: Susanne Barton (deceased)
Brother: Daniel Barton (deceased)

General Personality Overview
James Barton is a former Starfleet officer, turned mercenary, turned criminal who fled his prior life after tragedy on Vulcan killed his remaining family. He assumed the name "Jacen Barnes" and lived for roughly 10 years aboard LIMBO, a massive space station in the Triangle, where he has subsisted as a low level criminal. He is massively strong and fast, due to experimental genetic manipulation, but suffers from crippling depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Strengths & Weaknesses
Barton's lungs were destroyed by a Romulan disruptor several years ago in the line of duty. He has been fitted with cybernetic replacements, allowing him great efficiency of oxygen control, greater resistances to smoke or gaseous environments, and the ability to hold his breath" for twenty minutes. During his time as a mercenary, Barton received illegal steroid/gene therapy. As a result, his strength is proportional to a species evolved to high gravity environments. He is not only larger in physique, he is two inches taller than his previous records indicate. Furthermore, other than the very slight graying around his beard, he appears several years younger than his actual age. The long-term ramifications of these unregulated treatments are unknown, but potentially severe. He has lived with untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for a decade. This manifests in occasional paranoid delusion, extreme self-loathing, and night terrors.

Ambitions
Once, before leaving Starfleet, Barton dreamed of his own command. However, the past decade has robbed him of his previous ambition. A combination of chemical abuse, trauma, self-loathing, and life in a dismal environment has left him with no ambitions beyond maintaining his precarious control over his alcoholism, even while depending on alcohol to mitigate the symptoms of his PTSD.

Hobbies & Interests
In his previous life, Barton was an artist. He'd gathered impressive critical reviews while a student performer in live theatre. He taught himself to play both the guitar and the piano. He had a reputation as a voracious reader. While he worked hard to maintain the peak fitness required for his duties in Starfleet, his only competitive athletic interest was fencing. He was ranked 274th in global rankings on Earth. After his exodus from Starfleet and the events on Vulcan, as his mercenary career blossomed, his attention shifted to focus entirely on physical and martial supremacy. He has spent the majority of his days engaged in an ever expanding exercise regiment, including a variety of Terran and Alien martial arts, strength and flexibility programs, and muscle building. Apart from this regiment, his only passion is for bourbon, a variety of whiskey native to the region of Earth.

PERSONAL HISTORY

James Prophecy Barton is a man undone.

Once Barton was among Starfleet's most promising young officers. Decorated before even joining the fleet proper, he rapidly rose in both rank and experience. He served as Executive Officer of the Training Vessel DISCOVERY, before being posted as Flight Control Officer, then Chief Engineer of the USS FARRAGUT. During that time, he adopted the orphaned child of an Academy classmate and friend killed in the line of duty. These years were a golden time for Barton. He was proud of his service to the Federation, he formed strong friendships with the officers he served with, and fatherhood agreed with him. He was known for being cool under fire. He developed a reputation as a ladies’ man and a joker, although he skirted insubordination charges once or twice due to the latter. He grew into his own aboard the FARRAGUT, then was reassigned briefly to the USS ZEUS as her Chief Security/Tactical Officer. Soon, however, in a foreshadowing of grim things to come, family matters on Vulcan following the Vulcan/Romulan secession necessitated a leave of absence.

Upon his return to Starfleet and completion of Holodeck retraining, he was assigned as Sec/Tac of the Federation flagship, the USS ODYSSEY, where he was decorated for meritorious conduct. He also, for a short time, began forwarding sensitive information to a resistance movement on Vulcan partially commanded by his father, Edward Barton. As a result of his distinguished service aboard the ODYSSEY, he was offered the position of Chief of Operations for the newly activated GATEWAY STATION. Shortly after arrival, he submitted for a personal leave of absence.

It was the last Starfleet officially heard of James Prophecy Barton.

Brief references to a ‘JPB’ in insurgent communiques, eyewitness accounts matching his description, and passing mentions of a ‘Preston Willis,’ an alias known to be used by Barton, suggest that Barton ‘went native’ in working with the Vulcan Resistance. After the Fact investigation by Starfleet Intelligence suggests Edward Barton was responsible for radicalizing a faction of the Vulcan Resistance, a faction which became known as Surak’s Resignation. Surak’s Resignation is known to be responsible for a number of attacks and bombings on both Vulcan/Romulan military and civilian institutions. Accounts differ as to whether James Barton was an accomplice to these acts or whether he was working to oppose his father. The most well-known, and final, operation of Surak’s Resignation was a widely condemned bombing attack that inadvertently leveled a populated preschool. This bombing is known to have killed Barton’s adopted son, Michael Erickson-Barton, and was also believed to have killed James and Edward Barton.

Following the bombing, Barton disappeared. Wracked with guilt and no longer trusting governmental authority, Barton moved in fits and starts toward neutral space. Desperate, he drew on contacts formed within the radical community and was introduced to a number of criminals and criminal organizations in his pursuit of employment. It is believed that at about this time, Barton began using the alias “Jacen Barnes.” His familiarity with Starfleet protocols, wide aptitude, varied experience, and apparent fearlessness (actually the early manifestations of a death wish) quickly earned him a valued reputation among the criminal element on the fringe. A prospective employer, hoping to utilize Barton as one of his primary enforcers, covered the cost of an extensive, and illegal genetic augmentation procedure. Barton’s physical size and strength increased significantly. The long term effects of this treatment are unexplored (which is a key reason why the Federation wouldn’t authorize it,) though honestly, Barton wouldn’t have cared to learn them if they were. He also eventually beat his benefactor to death in a negotiation session that neither man would have described as “productive.”

Over a matter of years, Barton’s reputation for fearlessness became a reputation for recklessness, as both his list of adopted bad habits and the list of unsuccessful operations he ran grew steadily. From the smoky backrooms where two-cred hustlers, goons, and thugs congregated, to the penthouses where the crime lords lounged, conversations were had about Barnes and his awful “waste of potential.” Barnes’ career as a highly sought-after freelance criminal operative ended as surely, if not as dramatically or quickly, as Barton’s career in Starfleet.

For several years, he lived in near-anonymity on LIMBO. He worked sporadically, mostly as intimidating muscle for some of the station’s movers or shakers. Very rarely, he was tasked with breaking bones that were impeding his employers’ agendas. He abandoned or wrestled into submission most of his narcotic crutches, but his reputation as a drunk and a junkie remained, and he didn’t care enough to correct the presumption.

Following the events surrounding the USS PHOENIX's arrival on Limbo, James Barton fled the station along with thousands of other former Federation citizens. He assumed a leadership/sheriff role among the refugees, and was instrumental in defeating an effort by former associates to take over the ship. When the Phoenix arrived at Elandipole, Barton was offered the chance to step out of the shadows and resume his old life in Starfleet, an offer he accepted.

Barton was present on the Phoenix when Starfleet reunited and returned to take the fight to the Neo-Essentialists. In the summer of 2431, during the Battle of Earth, James Barton became the first Human to make a space-to-surface jump that originated outside the atmosphere of a planet. Deployed from two million feet above the Earth's surface, Barton's record freefall through the atmosphere enabled the orbiting Starfleet to make contact with its operatives on the surface, and assisted in the co-ordination of the final strike against the Neo-Essentialist regime.

Following the victory, rather than face charges relating to the bomb attack on Vulcan in his youth, James Barton disappeared into the galaxy again, once again becoming a fugitive from justice.