Lieutenant Magnus Volsung
Name Magnus Volsung
Position Assistant Chief Security/Tactial Officer
Rank Lieutenant
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 45 | |
| Date of Birth | 5th December, 2350 | |
| Place of Birth | Norway, Earth |
Starfleet Info
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'9" | |
| Weight | 157lbs | |
| Build | Average | |
| Hair Color | Grey (used to be brown) | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Physical Description | Magnus is of generally average height, although a bit on the shorter side of average, weight and build. His brown hair is now mostly grey, but he still sports a mostly brown light beard. He has a prominent nose, full lips and a certain ruddiness in his skin that not even years in space has taken away from him. He also had the ability to have his default resting face to have a worried quality to it, as if he is already anticipating the next bad thing to happen in the line-up of rubbish things on your average hellish shift. Off duty, he wears an arm ring, of silver, with a raven's head at each end. These are used as a sign of adulthood among the men where he grew up, as well as currency. When on shoreleave, he wears one with chains of gold-plated latinum, that he can easily take a chain off to use as payment. Magnus has a tattoo of two ravens on his chest, spreading over his right side. He also has a rune tattoo on his back, down his spine, with the runes 'Raidho', 'Algiz' and 'Mannaz', representing the journey he is on in this world (raidho), the protection he asks the gods for (algiz) and his sense of self (mannaz). |
Family
| Father | Njal, son of Knud | |
| Mother | Revna, daughter of Sune |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Magnus can be seen as a thoughtful man, always thinking about something. He is actually a very calculating person, taking into account the risks for every encounter and how to get the best outcome. He has a sense of humour, although a bit dark and he usually keeps it to himself unless he feels comfortable around someone. He is a sensitive soul as well, with a love for old legends and poetry. While he appears even tempered, underneath it all is still a lot of anger about his past. As a Starfleet Officer, he holds the ideals of the Federation in the highest regard, but has been around long enough to know it is not always practical or realistic. He doesn’t have many friends but those he holds in his confidence he has an undying loyalty to, and an endless amount of forgiveness. He still holds onto the faith he was brought up in and follows the core of those traditions in his personal life. As the Chief Security Officer, he would lay down his life for his team, his Captain and his ship. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Magnus is a thinker, which is good if you want something well planned. It is less good for afterwards, as he has a tendency to mull things over. He has an almost perfectionist view of paperwork and has brought many a Security officer to long for the airlock by making them re-file reports. This perfectionism is not helpful to a department, and shows that he has a lot to learn about being a Chief. He has a very high pain tolerance, to the point that it will suddenly hit him just how much he has managed to damage himself. His temper, when it snaps, can be almost violent and for someone who is so average in his physicality, the adrenaline spike can make him surprisingly strong and fast. |
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| Ambitions | Magnus, despite everything, doesn’t have any real ambition beyond where he is now. He always wanted to be Chief and now that he is one, he is trying to learn to be the best one he can be for his department. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Magnus loves poetry and legends and enjoys time on the holodeck as well. He is a good sailor in a longboat but finds modern simulations difficult. He enjoys music and plays the tagelharpa, a bowed lyre. He also sings. He trains every day in the gym, wanting to keep fit for his work. | |
| Likes / Dislikes | Likes: A well-written end of shift report, a glass of beer or cup of coffee with conversation Dislikes: Replicated food (insists it tastes different even if he knows it is all in his head), citrus fruit |
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| Languages Spoken | Old Norse, Norwegian, Standard |
Character History / Other
| Personal History | Magnus was born during a snowstorm, on Nordkvaloya in the north of Norway. Originally a protected area due to the wildlife and marine biology, Professor Eva Vikeland took her group of likeminded followers and settled there. Professor Vikeland had been an historian, specialising in the Viking age, and disillusioned by the dependencies of people on modern technology started what was politely talked about during this time as a cult. Magnus was the fifth generation born there, and for him it would be normal to live the way people did almost two thousand years ago. They were fishers and farmers and hunters, although he did hear about going Viking, the practice that their supposed ancestors did of travelling to other places by boat, fighting and taking what they wanted. But Nordkvaloya’s little settlement had to stay within the guidelines of the modern area, so the doctrine was that it was no longer necessary. As a small boy, he never thought it odd to see ships in the sky flying over them but took it as one of those things where he was meant to run and hide. Like all children, Magnus was taught about the gods of old, of battles raged and how to fend for himself against nature’s harsh environment. He trained to swing an axe to chop wood, but also to defend himself against the day that someone would try and invade their lands. He learned to hunt, to repair sails, make fishing nets and what berries could be eaten and what mushrooms to leave behind. As he got older, Magnus was introduced to another layer of society, the outward face. The settlement had an arrangement with the local representatives, to ensure the wellbeing of the people and avoid any laws being broken. He learned that outside their islands, there were other languages spoken. Norwegian was picked up quickly, as it meant speaking with those who lived on the mainland. They had different clothes and could appear out of nowhere. He was taught that was not magic, but technology, which was dangerous and best kept away from. But when he was 14, he was asked if he wanted to go to school on the mainland. It was always asked when the children were considered adults. All the children always said no. Magnus said yes. He was curious about what was on the mainland and had a thirst for knowledge. So, five days a week, he was on the mainland, living with a family as a lodger of sort. His mother encouraged him to stay away from technology, to keep to himself as much as possible. Magnus didn’t. He made friends, he learned how to use the technology around him. He learned Standard, he learned about what was beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, about other planets and species. He learned and the more he learned the more trapped he felt when he was on the island, not just surrounded by people who weren’t interested in the outside world, but with questions his parents refused to answer. Tensions grew as he got older, mostly because Magnus started questioning the way things were done. In the end, he was told he had to be silent, or he could leave. Magnus, being impulsive and having a temper, said that he couldn’t empty his head of knowledge just to be settled. So he left for the mainland. He was 16. The next two years he lived in a bedsit, studying hard, unable to quite embrace what those around him celebrated and believed in. He still held onto his belief in the old gods, although he saw them more as representations of hidden forces in the universe than as a literal Odin and Frigga. He kept the days his parents had taught him, the same little habits, from the bath on Saturday to observing the changes of season. Magnus graduated and took work at a local tourist information centre. He learned that the shuttles he had hidden from as a child were tourists, taking in the traditional lives of the island from afar, with scanners. It meant he met people from all over the Federation, but hearing what they said about the simple life he had grown up with made him feel ashamed of where he came from. He lasted another two months before resigning, finding himself trying to figure out what to do. It was oddly by chance that he was in a bar drinking when he met a man who would put him on a different path. Jon Wilhelmson was a Starfleet Officer, visiting the country of his birth, and they struck up a conversation. Jon told Magnus about Starfleet, about the different departments, about ‘sailing across the stars, reaching out to new people and finding new cultures to embrace’. The words struck Magnus, who liked the idea of the stars as a new sea, new adventures. Of finding new adventures. He applied to Starfleet a few weeks later, and at the age of 20 he was accepted into Starfleet Academy. It was 2070. Magnus took the name Volsung, more because it was easier to pronounce and sounded a lot less Klingon than ‘Son of Njal’. Volsung was taken from the Vulsunga saga, the story of the great-grandson of Odin, and his family. As a man who could not speak to his family now, Magnus took some comfort in it. At the Academy, Magnus started training to become a security officer, based on his scores during the tests. Magnus enjoyed the workout more than he did the rules and regulations he had to learn, but he had a good brain for remembering things. The war broke out and Magnus, like many cadets in his year, was unable to do anything except wait to graduate. The rising tension saw the cadets trying to help where they can and such things as rankings and ceremonies were secondary to getting posted. He graduated in 2374 and was immediately sent to the USS Elkins as a security officer. Dropped into a war, Magnus was as green as the others who had transferred there from the Academy. War was a harsh environment and Magnus found himself adapting. The one time the ship was boarded, he ended up picking up a handaxe he had taken from his home and using it as a secondary weapon when he could not use the phaser. After the war ended, he was transferred to the USS Niels Bohr, where he served as a Security Officer. With the war over there was still a lot of work left to be done. But Magnus found himself rising up the ranks on the back of his common sense and ability to listen to others. He was organised, he knew the regulations and he always made sure that the weakest element of a plan, the ‘meatware’, was accounted for. Because people made mistakes and the only thing true of any strategy was that someone somewhere was going to mess something up. In his personal life, Magnus had a few relationships scattered through the years, all with men. Underneath the calmness and self-deprecating humour was a person who felt isolated and lonely, who built bonds but struggled to find a level of commitment to match his own. In the end, he gave up on romance and buried himself in work. His hair greyed early, something he blamed on the various reports after the shifts. In 2395, he went to the USS Wolff as the Assistant Chief of Security. |
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| Service Record | 2370-2374 Starfleet Academy, Security 2374-2375 USS Elkins 2375-2383 USS Niels Bohr, Security 2383-2390 USS Newton, Security 2390-2395 USS Crescent, Assistant Chief of Security 2395-PRES USS Wolff, Assistant Chief Security Officer |