Name: Sigma Raven
Muse: Rho
Call-sign: Pitch
Sigma is an uplifted raven from a ‘clutch’ of ten. He began life in a laboratory on Earth and was loaded into one of the initial colony ships headed for mars while still an egg. This was done for the practical purpose of saving space and life support reserves. Sigma still is somewhat resentful that he never ‘touched’ the earth atmosphere.
Already bred and programmed to be a pilot, Sigma and his nine ‘siblings’ were shipped to Mars and after maturing they quickly entered service as pilots assisting the early colonization.
The ravens and their muses were all named using the greek alphabet but omitting the letters zeta and eta (for sounding too similar to theta and the piloting term ETA), Nu (for sounding too close to Mu) and Omega (considered unlucky and ominous).
The original clutch were:
Alpha, muse Xi.
Beta, muse Pi.
Delta, muse Mu.
Gamma, muse Kappa
Epsilon, muse Tau.
Theta, muse Phi
Lambda, muse Psi
Omicron, muse Iota
Sigma, muse Rho.
Upsilon, muse Chi
Of these, Alpha, Beta and Gamma were all killed in action despite the available technology. Some of the others have required (or requested) new morphs over the years.
The uplifting facility and all but one of the staff were lost in the fall of Earth, so the surviving clutch-mates and “mother” are Sigma’s only family. Watching the human colonists treat the fallen avians more like lost equipment than comrades was a wake-up call for the survivors of the clutch, as was the lack of interest in replacing the avian pilots with new avians now that the population of colonists had grown large enough to fill the vacancies.
Despite all this the uplifts by and large went about their lives serving the corps (and their creators) loyally and eagerly, unlike the humans who were more prone to complaining about the virtual indentured servitude that was corporate life. For the uplifts this was the only life they had ever known and the one they had been designed, bred and born into.
While on mars Sigma had himself enhanced with temperature tolerance and enhanced respiration modifications, and then with the aid of only a light breather unit he became the first avian to fly unaided in the martian sky. This quickly caught on among the avians who had remained avians, though some had reacted to the humans treatment of them by abandoning the original bodies and ‘going human’.
Later Sigma chose to push his limits again and began piloting starships for the corp. Though he had served loyally as a shuttle pilot and atmospheric pilot for decades, he felt crowded out. Originally he was one of “the pilots” when there were few and the skies of mars were a dangerous wilderness…and now every monkey can give flying a try. Doing space freight runs for the corp let him see the solar system, both pre-fall and post-fall, traveling place to place but never settling down. He settled to about half-time on Mars and half-time traveling the solar system.
This travel was also a wake-up call, seeing the other human societies off mars and the treatment of uplifts (himself included) in those societies. Trying to express this to some of his siblings and why it mattered proved difficult, however.
The matriarch of the clutch, whom they reverently call “mother”, is a fall evacuee from Earth and made contact with her scattered creations after Earth fell. A brilliant and driven expert in the field of genetics and uplifting, Mother is adapting her skills to the post-fall society. She was traveling to a conference at the time of the fall, and that is what let her escape alive. The uplifting facility she worked at and everyone stationed there was lost in the fall. Mother visits her creations and draws great strength from seeing their lives, and presumably from the welcome she receives as a beloved mother-goddess.
There is some whispered rumor among the uplifts though that mother shows hints of immortality blues, only staved off by her living vicariously through her creations.
A corp memo shortly after his forty-ninth birthday informed him his period of primary service were up and that he had paid off himself as a corporate asset six years early. His sister Lambda beat him to this goal years earlier, however. The shuttle freight runs earned a higher level of reimbursement than being a local pilot and put Sigma ahead of his peers. This was a mere eight years after the fall and Sigma decided to opt for a detached duty of sorts from his corporate masters. He did another circuit of the solar-system piloting corp freighters planet to planet (except not to the Jovians, of course) and using the time for some serious soul-searching. Finally he settled on the Titan area for a temporary home, where he offered his services as a pilot for hire.
Titan was the perfect place for his fledgeling plans. The first was to start contacting uplift-rights activists and to get involved with the cause…even though he had no experience with the cause and knew he had no particularly relevant skills for it. The second was to correct some design omissions, in particular his morph was suited for atmospheric piloting and low orbit work around mars, and lacked the ‘hard vacuum’ precautions Sigma was interested in now. He contacted an expert in morph modification for vac-sealing, hardened skeleton and bioweave armor modifications. This also helped with the more lawless rough-and-tumble society on titan. The third was more of a byproduct of the first, talking to the anarchist types got the bird involved with the reclaimers and eco-groups, because what bird can resist the idea of flying in real skies? Sigma considers his involvement “serious dabbling” with the anarchists and “casual dabbling” with the eco-groups.
Sigma is coming up on about a year working in the Titan area, as a professional pilot and with a reputation for being naturally helpful. He has rented vessels on and off but prefers to let his employer organize the ships and cargo. Getting a ship of his own will be a likely future goal but at the moment he is too much of a free spirit, or in other words too undecided about his future.
Even on Titan he favors the various corporations (out of familiarity) but he is more than happy to take a job from almost anyone. Though he is adept at corporate networking, he tends to be networked to by the other groups (as evidenced by decent rep and high profession but low networking skill with them) rather than seeking them out. This happens enough that it is almost an in-joke in some of his favorite hangouts, that he is the bird at the cafe who can fly you places.
