Garrick Vale
IHCG Hazard Trooper
GARRICK VALE
Age: 34
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Height: 1.89 m
Weight: 96 kg
Force Sensitive: No
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Garrick Vale is tall and heavily built, with the broad shoulders and strong back expected of someone who regularly carries armour, tools and injured personnel. His rust-red hair is kept in a military undercut, although the longer section on top rarely stays neat after wearing a sealed helmet. He has pale blue-grey eyes, light stubble and several small scars across his hands and forearms.
A cybernetic interface is fitted behind his right ear, allowing him to connect directly with his CBRN RIG. Less visible reinforcements support his spine and major joints, helping him carry the weight of the armour and its life-support equipment for extended periods.
Outside the armour, Garrick normally wears dark work shirts, heavy trousers and durable boots. He looks more like a technician or emergency responder than a soldier when he is off duty.
During operations, Garrick wears the dark armour and ochre pressure suit of an IHCG Hazard Trooper. The unit insignia is displayed on one shoulder and over his heart.
INVENTORY
* IHCG CBRN RIG
* Integrated Forearm Operations Console
* Compact Blaster Carbine
* Heavy Folding Rescue Knife
* Breaching and Sealing Equipment
* Hazard Sampling Kit
* Decontamination Supplies
* RIG Release Tool
* Comlink
* Datapad
* Standard Imperial Field Equipment
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Garrick is easy-going, dependable and quietly humorous when his unit is off duty. He spends much of his time maintaining equipment, drinking caf and talking with the other operators around the ready room. He is comfortable being part of the squad and has little interest in becoming its commanding officer.
Once deployed, Garrick becomes much quieter. He checks his equipment carefully, communicates in short instructions and expects the people around him to follow containment procedures. He rarely raises his voice, believing that panic creates more problems than it solves.
Garrick considers the IHCG a rescue organisation first. Infected or exposed personnel are treated as casualties for as long as recovery remains possible. He is willing to take considerable risks to retrieve survivors, but he understands that some incidents eventually reach the point where containment matters more than rescue.
He remains loyal to the Empire, although he has developed a strong distrust of classified research projects and the people responsible for them. Garrick has learned that an incomplete briefing is often more dangerous than the threat itself.
STRENGTHS
Hazard Trooper
Garrick is trained to operate inside chemical, biological, radiological and other contaminated environments. He understands containment procedures, exposure tracking, decontamination and the use of specialised protective equipment.
Breach and Recovery
His background in combat engineering makes him skilled at forced entry, field repairs, sealing damaged structures and extracting personnel from unstable facilities.
Steady Under Pressure
Garrick remains calm when a situation begins to deteriorate. He works through problems methodically and is difficult to frighten into making careless decisions.
WEAKNESSES
Procedure-Bound
Garrick relies heavily on established containment doctrine. While those procedures have kept him alive, unusual threats can force him to adapt more quickly than he is comfortable with.
RIG Dependent
The CBRN RIG requires specialist tools and assistance to fully don or remove. Separation from his unit, damage to the suit or loss of its support equipment can leave Garrick trapped inside increasingly heavy armour.
No One Left Inside
Garrick struggles to abandon personnel who may still be alive. He has remained inside compromised areas longer than orders or common sense would recommend.
HISTORY
Garrick Vale grew up around orbital industry, where emergency alarms, sealed bulkheads and safety drills were ordinary parts of life. He entered Imperial service as a combat engineer and received additional training in damage control, fire suppression and hazardous-material response.
He developed a reputation for remaining useful when the environment became more dangerous than the enemy. Garrick was rarely the loudest or most aggressive soldier in his unit, but he was good at noticing failing structures, damaged life-support systems and signs of contamination before they became obvious.
His career changed during the evacuation of a classified Imperial research station. The responding unit had been told to expect an industrial accident and possible sabotage. Instead, they encountered a biological outbreak and infected personnel moving through the facility.
Garrick helped establish a clean area and opened an extraction route through the station. Several personnel were recovered before the installation was placed under Full Sanitisation Protocol.
The incident contributed to Garrick's transfer into the Imperial Hazard Containment Group. He now serves as a Hazard Trooper specialising in breaching, containment and casualty recovery.
Most of his time is spent training, maintaining equipment and waiting around the IHCG ready station with the rest of the squad. When an alert arrives, Garrick helps seal the operator beside him into their RIG before trusting them to do the same for him.