Name: Douglas Rattmann

Gender: Male, straight

Age/DOB: 30@Resonance Cascade; arrived RY9

Origin: Aperturth, Boston Mass, Borealis ship designer/crew

Family: Unknown, has claimed to have a sister, but any family he might have would still be in another dimension

Other: Part of his own department's projects, he lives up to his name; though Melissa has dealt with his DNA she absolutely refuses to be in the same room with him, and wonders how in the world Judith does on the Borealis

Height: 6'3"

Weight: 140, extremely skinny, gangly, and this includes cybernetic attachments

Hair: light brown, full and somewhat thick, but often stands on end with electric energy

Eyes: blue, sunken but large, and sleep-deprived, under angular and bushy eyebrows, does require glasses for distance vision

Appearance: pasty skinned, blushes or flushes easily; with the alterations he's had done to his body he has a rat-like tail, which jolts electricity at times; slightly pointed ears and a sharp nose, prominent chin; typically wears skinny jeans, hightops, green scrub shirt, and labcoat over that, tail is attached at high waist, powered by belt batteries, but connected to spine; his voice is shrill, squeaky, very slightly hissing, in other words a rat-like one

Icarus Processing: none, but has undergone numerous procedures from Aperture, including the insertion of cybernetics throughout his nervous system. The Resonance Cascade on his world very clearly triggered other abilities that were buried in his genes, however it is unlikely that he'll be able to pass any of those along due to the interference from his implants

Image Credits: ravensstuff

Genetic Abilities: thanks to having participated in some bioengineering experiments, minor changes brought on by the RC include 'rat like' features - thin and side-pointing ears, longer nose, and 'beady' eyes, but also strongly increased senses of smell and touch; his fingers look fairly normal, however he has nails that grow extremely sharp and slender, and tends to keep them either bitten down or filed, and his finger pads are 'squishier' than a normal person's. He is extremely fast on his feet, and while he cannot really 'climb walls' he seems to know just where to go innately while scurrying around a site. It's possible that his biological alterations allow him a bit of empathic communication with rodents of all kinds, somewhat handy on a ship. He can eat basically anything organic, and some things that aren't, including toxic goo or waste products, and honestly though everyone else thinks it's horrible, he doesn't care what they think. He keeps himself quite clean, after doing so. Additionally however, he has the cybernetic implants mentioned above that originally were intended to improve his typing speed, but ended up allowing him to access other pieces of hardware such as his jolt-tail and rocket boots. (not those shoes shown) Though he lacks training in Rookery equipment, anything that he or his Aperturth compatriots either brought with them or assemble using their own code or circuitry layouts he can access with ports from his neck. His entire spinal column has been replaced with organic metal, extremely like Icarus, but more clearly metallic and not carbon-fiber. His 'tail' is removable, but he tends to leave it on these days, unless he's intending to work in wet conditions outside (or in the ship, but he has insulation for that). It is powered mainly by small cells on his belt, which also clips into his spine - he has modified it only slightly from the neck collar version it started out as (yes, he's ... he's that skinny), and the batteries can last for weeks even if he's using it to start small generators or jolt headcrabs. It produces a shock that can stun but not kill a houndeye, and even though he's working around quite a bit of sensitive equipment and data storage devices it is not known to have ever disrupted that data. Additionally to the electric power, the tail does have a number of other features which he tends not to use - those jagged ends can swipe at things (he does use that in dire defensive situations) but also it can be shot out as a grapple hook... leaving him dangling by his ass via his spine and that is Just Not Comfortable.

Notably all of the cybernetic equipment has rendered his DNA slightly different, but not in a useable format - Melissa knows he could actually sire children the 'normal' way, but samples of it drawn from blood or saliva simply waste away and dissolve within minutes of leaving his body. He's not averse to 'donating' but... he has issues enough that a lot of women wouldn't particularly want to get near him, so there's that. Melissa will not aid in this venture in any way.

Skills or Profession: a research scientist and designer for Aperture's Borealis project, and he's worked on numerous different kinds of code, as well as biological and cybernetics reserch. His own designs went into his equipment, but he would have preferred a more biological approach than the 'snap on' tool kit he was given. He's a remarkable programmer, though he is struggling with Combine code he really does want to break it. He's worked with robotics and cybernetics most recently, and animal and biological research earlier in his career, so he can chat it up with xenobiologists as well as folks creating solutions to the Combine processing. He speaks English and Russian, but also has a strong side of French, with a little Finnish thrown in. He makes maps in his spare time, and can do logic puzzles, word games, and mazes better than virtually any human.
Personality: Twitchy, spastic, hyperfocused, rather typical of someone with not only ADHD but a good number of psychoses. Though he had been on medication for some of those, they're in short supply on the Rookery, but it seems that a Vortal connection to his dragon has fixed some of them so he's more or less functional. Still twitchy and rude, still jumpy and prefers to be alone. However, he will definitely leave information for others to find, and while often cryptic, he figures the people who can understand what he's laid out will be the ones who deserve to make it through. He does focus a bit much on specific people, but he backs off if they tell him to: notably, when he came across Repurposed Chell, there were some... sparks - emotional ones. Even he cannot really explain this.

Events or History: as above, he was a research scientist and coder for Aperture basically all his adult life. He was put on the Borealis project and had tremendous success with pathfinding and stress fracture analysis. Earlier he'd been given some of the same serum as those criminals on their bus? But it hadn't done anything until the Resonance Cascade. If he seemed rat-like before that point, it was absolutely how he wound up later. He's fine with that. He likes rats. What he doesn't understand is why both Judith and Melissa, as well as Chell, avoid him like the ... rat plague. He has no knowledge of the events that occurred to a different dimension's version of himself, nor why Lane (... one of them? there's more of him?) continually 'checks up' on him with an extremely scary glare. Judith Mossman gives him the widest berth and the widest eyes as well - but is continually shadowed by Lane. That's not really true: she behaves quite erratically, and then becomes a bit more genial after he visits.**

With the presence of Core, who is also known as 'The Ice Core', they actually have a strong Vortal bond which is highly unusual for non-Nightwing Pyrrhan dragons to exhibit.

** Since the events in Repurposed Earth involved their version of Rattmann becoming 'corrupt' thanks to Alma Wade's Vortal twisting, and subsequently that version of him being redacted from the dimension entirely, this one is always on edge around any of those mentioned above. But he is significantly different from the one that they ostensibly dealt with, enough so that even Judith can work with him for short periods. But he definitely has been watched by Lane (actually both of them, now that Local understands what his counterpart went through) and is sometimes steered away from interacting with Mossman or others. It suits Rattmann fine, he likes working on his own for the most part, but it is a little disconcerting to know that 'he' did some terrifying things to 'them'. He only faintly looks like their version, which helps.

Dragon

Name: Core
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: Medium-large 12' s / 66' l / 110' ws
Colors: Albino, though with a great amount of red visible this is not due to sunburn and instead may be a very pale red-violet gene. belly from chin to tail tip is white; body from face to tail, wingarms and limbs, and chest/back spines is faintly mottled pale pink-white with lavender hints, neck gill scales brightly pink with pale pink edging, face dusty lavender; dorsal wingsails very pale lavender-dust, underside of wings brightly mottled pink with strong amounts of carnation and dusty violet-red, mixed with white; wing armor dusty carnation pink; leg armor insets bright red, also all other marking insets glow from brilliant red to blinding pink white, eyes red, horns and claws very pale peachy-pink
Features: Seawing, however she may have a significant amount of Icewing in her, primarily showing with her ease of operation in extremely cold locations and pale coloration
Powers: Winged and Water Flight, while she is quite graceful in the air, and surprisingly strong in rainy or foggy conditions, Core prefers to swim. She can fly for several hours at low altitude without really tiring, but if it's brightly lit around her she does suffer, and overheats easily. So she definitely enjoys diving from a storm into choppy waters, and can swim as strongly as any Seawing below the surface. She prefers cold waters, and middle-depths, though she has been known to visit those dragons down near Rapture, and gets on just fine in the dark. She can carry or drag very heavy things in water, including from the surface, but lifting them in the air is much more difficult.
Communication, because she is a Seawing, she speaks Draconic and has her own Aquatic signals to aid, but also speaks English very well, and Vortigese to a degree, however she can miss meanings pretty easily because she lacks any further Vortal power.
Sea Adaptation, Core is able to breathe under water thanks to the gills on her neck, and is casually able to move through even extremely swift currents. She does like to glide on currents from place to place when there is complicated landscaping around, and is remarkably careful to not disturb formations or constructions particularly down near Rapture. Core withstands incredible low temperatures, and swims among the ice floe around the Borealis quite comforatbly. In fact she can move between icy water and icy land with such grace that no one doubts she's part Icewing.
Instafreeze, with a watery spray from her mouth, Core is able to instantly freeze water, including mist or fog already in the air, into a solid mass. While it might be extremely thin and brittle, this thinness can act as a glass-sharp edge when broken, and she can use this to create mirror-smooth surfaces. They can be used as mirrors, in fact, or as perfectly clear barriers that are undetectable to the eye. She can work in tandem with other water-shapers or breath weapons from dragons, and produce amazing effects. The freezing lasts nearly a day, depending on the weather and temperature around it, and she can do this to a very large volume or size of contiguous water or vapor that is closely enough packed.
Parentage: Unknown, not likely related to any on Rookery, may have an Icewing grandparent
Origin: adopted from LunarSolstice981 with lines by Biohazardia on Deviantart, WoF by Tui Sutherland
Other Info: Core doesn't understand why some humans have problems with her friend, and she's very much more pleasant than he really is, honestly.