Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Character Profile: Master A Aaron Addle

Aaron, was son of a telegrapher James, and sickly mother Anna. He grew up rather impoverished, owing to the fact that James had to spend all of the spare income and more on medicinal herbs for Anna, who suffered repeated bouts of multiple herb resistant TB. As a result, Aaron was raised in James' workplace. He learned [Morse] Code as a toddler, and it is in reality his first. He, along with a select few of his peers (kids who learned Code as toddlers) could communicte with key faster than anyone could follow, or dream of. He was also an mechanicist, who as a child dissassembled the wall clock in James' office, and reassembled it. Despite having three cogs left over, the reassembled clock had two new chime sounds, kept much better time and needed winding only once every other week. His most significant invention was a Code Key that worked far faster than the manual models, and allowed him to communicate with his many distant friends. (Yes, he Black Boxed the Telegraphic Web and consorted with Steam Punks, though unknowingly.) His communication skills were rewarded when, in a chain of events too long to tell here, he was recruited into Her Majesty's foreign service as a communications officer, responsible for secure, encrypted communication with London. His amazing talents obviously worked for the Royal High Commissioner, but Aaron longed for a little more adventure, and even more for the opportunity to better his financial lot, so he could afford to marry--no impoverished family for Aaron! He was fiercely loyal to Her Majesty, and, naturally, a staunch Anglican (his sovereign being defender of the Faith, after all). He was bespeckled with the wierdest of mechanical spectacles, which had interchangable lenses able to adjust from near to far vision, microscope to telescope. He carried a kit box with an incredible variety of mechanical and personal items, tucked into a seemingly endless number of tiny compartments, some of which were well hidden, sometimes even from Aaron himself. Though the picture of English gentlemanly eccentricity, an image he cultivated with relish, Aaron's impoverishment as a child, and the necessity to obtain herbs far too expensive to purchase through legal channels, gave Aaron a secret underground background, and so he was exceedingly street wise.

1 comment:

Mike Perschon said...

Good to hear Master A Aaron Addle is fiercely loyal to the crown. I envisioned your gadgeteer as the assistant to the original team. Love the multi-lensed spectacles.