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Mon Oct 5th, 2026 @ 5:34pm
Sergeant Jace Morven
Name Jace Morven
Position Platoon Sergeant
Rank Sergeant
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 38 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6' | |
| Weight | 190lbs | |
| Hair Color | Brown | |
| Eye Color | Blue | |
| Physical Description | Jace is six feet tall and solidly built, broad across the shoulders without being especially bulky. Most of the muscle comes from years of training, fighting and physical work rather than anything he has done for appearance. He tends to be still when he has no reason to move, and doesn't fidget much, although that changes quickly enough when something catches his attention. He has dark brown hair, kept short at the sides and slightly longer on top, and blue eyes. His jaw is usually covered in dark stubble, more because he doesn't particularly care about being clean-shaven than any deliberate choice of style. His features are strong, with a heavy brow, high cheekbones and a square jaw, and he often looks more tired than he actually is. There are scars across his hands and forearms, along with older marks elsewhere from Turkana IV and the years since. A deeper scar sits close to his collarbone, and there is a faint surgical line behind his right ear. He doesn't hide them, but doesn't pay them much attention either. Jace can be intimidating, although not because he tries to be. He has a habit of watching people closely and noticing what is happening around him, particularly entrances, exits and changes in a room. Most of the time there is very little wasted movement in him. When something does happen, however, he can go from completely still to moving very quickly. |
Family
| Father | Unknown | |
| Mother | Unknown |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Jace is heavily compartmentalised, with years of practice at putting difficult things somewhere they will not interfere with whatever needs doing next. His psychological record notes chronic PTSD, moral injury and severe emotional repression. He is quiet, blunt when he does speak, and uncomfortable with introspection. Humour tends to be dry and fatalistic, while personal questions are often met with short answers, sarcasm or silence. He has a tendency to stare and can appear cold or emotionless to outsiders. He functions well under pressure because immediate problems make sense to him. Threats can be assessed, injuries treated and positions defended. People are harder. Jace has learned considerable control over himself, but can still become frighteningly direct when somebody under his protection is threatened. Jace tends to understand people through what they do rather than what they say. Reliability, loyalty and usefulness make sense to him in ways friendship and affection often do not, largely because he learned early that being useful was what kept him safe and wanted. He does form strong attachments, although he rarely recognises them in those terms. Care shows up in practical ways: noticing injuries, remembering limits, fixing things, keeping promises and putting himself between other people and danger. There are people in his life who consider him a friend, even if Jace is still working out what that means. Jace is gay and makes no effort to hide it, though he rarely talks about it. His relationships have mostly been casual or transactional and he has never had a long-term romantic partnership. He keeps largely to himself, prefers quiet places and avoids unnecessary socialising, though he has become more willing to let certain people into his routines. As a sergeant he leads by example, expects competence and pays close attention to the limits of the people under him. He believes in much of what the Federation stands for, but also believes those ideals only survive if somebody is willing to defend them. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Strengths: Jace is an experienced close-quarters combatant, trained in zero-gravity, high-gravity and boarding operations, and is highly proficient with a wide range of weapons. He has excellent situational awareness and tends to notice changes in his surroundings quickly. Under pressure he is difficult to rattle, able to put fear, pain and distraction aside long enough to deal with whatever is immediately in front of him. He is also extremely dependable. Once Jace has accepted responsibility for somebody, whether that is his squad, a commanding officer or someone he cares about personally, he takes it seriously. He pays attention to what people can handle, keeps his word and will put himself at considerable risk before abandoning someone who is relying on him. Weaknesses: Jace has difficulty recognising and processing his own emotions, particularly grief, guilt and loss, and is far more comfortable doing something about a problem than talking about how it affects him. When emotionally compromised his thinking can narrow, particularly where somebody under his protection is threatened, and his threshold for using violence remains lower than that of most Starfleet personnel. He can struggle with social nuance and relationships where the expectations are unclear. Asking for help does not come naturally, and he has a tendency to measure his own value by how useful he is to other people. This can lead him to take responsibility for things that are not his to carry, or to put himself at unnecessary risk rather than allow somebody else to do so. |
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| Ambitions | Jace has no ambition for rank or prestige. He wants work that matters, people he can rely on and a place where he knows what is expected of him. Beyond that, his ambitions are less clear even to himself, though he has begun to discover that he wants more from life than simply being useful. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Jace finds a rare sense of focus in the ritual of dismantling and reassembling weapons systems, repairing old phasers or building new ones. The repetition brings him to a state close to meditation, particularly when the task is precise and mechanical. Over time, this has led him to collect disarmed and decommissioned weapons as historical curios, valued more for their construction than for what they represent. He trains regularly in close-quarters martial arts and blade work, treating them as forms of self-regulation that allow him to channel aggression within strict boundaries. One of his quieter skills is metal engraving, producing intricate designs with steady precision. He has considered expanding this into metalworking, although time and patience keep it on hold. He has also developed an interest in clockwork mechanisms, unexpectedly delicate work for hands trained in combat. These projects are often carried out in the holodeck, where he can access the tools and materials he needs and delete the workspace once finished. On the recommendation of his counsellor, he has begun using low-stimulation holodeck programmes such as quiet wilderness walks, campfires and obstacle courses. Because of his dyslexia, Jace has cultivated an interest in spoken language, using auditory methods to learn Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian tactical phrases. He cannot read them, but speaks fluently enough to almost pass as a native. He has also begun listening to music, again on a counsellor’s advice. Although not naturally drawn to it, he has found himself returning to old Earth Blues. He does not connect to the emotion behind it in the way others might, but has learned to use it as a way to be present in the moment without overanalysing it. |
| Personal History | Jace Morven was born on Turkana IV, the failed human colony infamous for its collapse into factional violence after severing ties with the Federation. Like many children born there, he has no birth records, surviving identification or confirmed family. The Federation later estimated his birth year as around 2350, although he suspects he may be younger. He remembers very little of his parents, only scattered memories of a woman whose face he can no longer recall. He does not know where the name Jace Morven came from. He remembers another name as well, and years when he was simply called “Boy”. He was taken in by a local militia because he was useful. Jace was quick with his hands and learned to repair power couplings and maintain weapons with little instruction. By twelve he was serving in an enclave security detachment, and by fifteen could strip and rebuild a rifle blindfolded, repair basic machinery and carry out the less pleasant work expected of him. On Turkana IV, usefulness kept him fed and alive. He learned early not to ask what happened to people who could no longer provide it. At seventeen, Jace escaped aboard the SS Hammersmith, a rogue freighter making an unsanctioned landing on Turkana IV. Discovered several days later, he was turned over to Starfleet at Starbase 173 and initially expected to be deported. Lieutenant Ryell Dannic, a Starfleet Security officer, intervened. She saw enough in him to argue for another option, and with her advocacy Jace was admitted into the Starfleet Enlisted Preparation Programme. Without Dannic, it is unlikely he would ever have been given the chance to remain in the Federation. Federation life was difficult in ways Jace had not expected. He was diagnosed with severe dyslexia, PTSD and socio-emotional detachment, and struggled with formal education and living around other people. Warrant Officer Dalia Korrin introduced tactile and visual learning methods that allowed him to make progress where conventional teaching had failed. She recognised his aptitude for engineering, repairs and weapons maintenance, and became one of the first authority figures in his life whose respect was earned through consistency rather than fear. Korrin kept him from being written off, and Jace never forgot it. By 2369, he had met the requirements for enlistment. His background, dyslexia and poor social adjustment made Starfleet Security and shipboard service unlikely choices, and he was instead directed towards the Federation Ground Forces. Korrin regretted seeing his mechanical ability pushed aside in favour of his physical skills, but Jace gave little thought to alternatives. He completed basic training despite struggling with barracks life and quickly showed an aptitude for weapons maintenance, tactical logistics and close-quarters combat. By the time the Dominion War began, Corporal Morven had already spent several years in the Ground Forces. He served with the 77th Infantry Battalion, a rapid-deployment assault unit known as the “Black Ash”, usually with advance squads carrying out breaches and taking ground ahead of the main force. Among those he served alongside was Corporal Martinez, one of the people who would survive enough of the same battles to become part of a very small group Jace continued to recognise as his own long after the war ended. The 77th already had a reputation for casualties and a culture of violence encouraged by Sergeant Tho, who treated his soldiers as expendable. During an early engagement, none of the squad warned Tho of an enemy sniper. He was killed, along with several others, and nobody mourned him. With the squad suddenly without leadership, Jace took over because somebody had to. He had no greater rank than some of the people around him, including Martinez, but they followed him in the field. Jace was not an easy man to serve alongside, but he was very different from Tho. He learned what the people around him could do, where they were strongest and where they were likely to break, and planned around keeping as many of them alive as possible. He did not ask them to do anything he would not do himself and was usually the first through a breach when he could be. The squad became close in the way people sometimes do after surviving the same terrible places, though Jace would never have described it that way. By the end of the war, responsibility for them had become instinctive. His conduct throughout the war was effective enough to earn recognition and violent enough to concern his superiors. After the retaking of Izar, one report noted that while his results were strategically successful, his methods warranted continued psychological monitoring. Rumours later circulated that Jace had deliberately destroyed a Jem'Hadar command post rather than risk leaving survivors behind. When questioned, his explanation was simply, “They were still moving.” The 77th was disbanded after the war. Jace was transferred to the 103rd, where long periods of routine proved harder for him than combat had. He made occasional attempts to socialise, usually abandoned them, and increasingly fell into solitary routines broken by deployments, arguments and occasional time in the brig. Another major change came when he was transferred to Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, under Sergeant Garin Vel. A seasoned Bolian NCO, Vel trained Jace in urban infiltration, small-unit tactics and combat psychology, but his greater influence came from the way he treated him. Vel trusted Jace without being afraid of him and expected him to exercise judgement rather than simply follow orders. Much of Jace’s later approach to loyalty, responsibility and leadership came from what Vel taught him. In 2387, during a counterinsurgency operation on Dovar IX, Vel and the forward squad were ambushed during a diplomatic extraction. Vel was killed. Cut off from his platoon, Jace breached the hostile position alone through a maintenance tunnel, killing ten people in eleven minutes. Several were later found to have been unarmed or attempting to surrender. Jace recovered a surviving hostage and prevented the execution of a diplomat, but his actions came close to ending his career. Vel's posthumous commendation and the testimony of the surviving hostage prevented a court-martial, and Jace was reassigned under psychological probation to Echo Platoon, Special Ordnance Division. In 2388, Jace was transferred to the Federation Ground Forces detachment aboard the USS Guinevere. The smaller unit, regular access to counselling and wider range of shipboard duties were intended to give him more structure outside combat. Given command of Alpha Squad, he now serves as a recognised sergeant rather than simply the man who takes over when nobody else is left. |
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| Service Record | 2369–2372 — Infantryman and field mechanic, 103rd Rapid Response Battalion 2372–2376 — Infantryman, 77th Infantry Rapid Response Battalion 2376–2382 — Combat engineer, 103rd Rapid Response Battalion 2382–2385 — Security specialist, 71st Expeditionary Detachment 2385–2387 — Tactical operative under Sergeant Garin Vel, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion 2387–2388 — Infantryman, Echo Platoon, Special Ordnance Division 2388–Present — Platoon Sergeant, 1st Platoon, Alpha Squad, Federation Ground Forces Detachment |