Diarmid

**name:** Captain Diarmid MacAskill

**alias:** his ma calls him dearie

**job:** he is a human medevac helicopter with a gun

**homeworld**: Elysia

**age:** late 20s

## biography

### early life

Diarmid is an officially licensed mutant; he has big fluffy wings colored like a pheasant's, mottled brown in summer and white in winter, triggered by changes in light cycle so he ends up going into molt every time he leaves the artificially-regulated ship and exists in a planetary cycle. Neither of his parents bore this mutation but they checked his genome and it's one of the accepted strings causing it, so he was permitted to live. It helps that his da's well-off, no doubt.

Diarmid's father is, specifically, a C-level executive (it doesn't matter where; they all play musical chairs every few years anyway), and his mother is JOYCE, a formidable human being. They're not married; Diarmid mostly lived with his ma, who bought a house that would let him be a day student at the fancy usually-a-boarding-school for rich twits that his father insisted on sending him to. Other things Diarmid's father provided him included motorbikes, a brief rock-music career, and eventually a commission in the Elysian Imperial Guard when it was determined that it was high time he, you know, got a career.

Diarmid had been under the impression that he HAD a career, actually - the career was motorbikes, his first and one true love - he'd won the circuit championship twice (sponsored, naturally, by Red Bull) and then he got told he was an army officer now, but well, there wasn't really going to be any way out of it so he just went along with it and that's what his life was.

### praxis incident

Roger was heading a ground crew mission on a planet where there were some Drop Troopers stationed, and the Drop Troopers had wings, and Roger knew damn well that if he went back without having gotten Simon a pet Guy With Wings and Simon heard about the possibility of it (by, perhaps, reading about the engagement in the news and seeing the Drop Troopers mentioned), Simon would be *terribly disappointed*. So it was Roger's duty to pick one up, and he had better pick the hottest one, and in Roger's opinion that was Diarmid. When it turned out Diarmid was also a championship motorbike racer it was clear Roger'd made the right choice - Simon would love this one, so Roger DID hire Diarmid but then ALSO subsequently did his goddamn best to make sure Simon never actually met him.

Of course this didn't work and eventually Simon and Diarmid were in the same location; Simon saw the wings, came over and made a comment using the word *angel*, Diarmid heard the word people always like to use when hitting on somebody with wings and rolled his eyes and Simon said something else using the word *seraph* and Diarmid genuinely thought he'd been called a giraffe, and that was how they met

### on the praxis

so the thing is diarmid also has this whole situation he's involved in that isn't his business to tell you, but like, okay, just - his bestie is a medic, right, but like a combat medic? and so the most tactically useful thing for diarmid to do is to be his bestie's own personal medevac helicopter to make sure they get to where they need to be to do their job and also diarmid shoots whatever needs shooting, because like, he's there and has a gun

### see also

* Diarmid's Quarters
* Diarmid's Private ~~Idaho~~ Island