Senior Chief Petty Officer Fordyce Kirschler
Name Fordyce Kirschler
Position Information Systems Technician
Rank Senior Chief Petty Officer
Character Information
| Sex | Male | |
| Sexual Orientation | heterosexual | |
| Age | 62 | |
| Species | Human |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6'0" | |
| Weight | 207 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Salt & Pepper | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Physical Description | Ford has a large frame and a paunch that's growing in sync with his advancing age. He has a naturally jovial face and always seems to be on the verge of laughter. He is often sporting a beard. He has a very relaxed vernacular influenced by his frontier upbringing. |
Family
| Spouse | Cecilia Saunders (Divorced); Sunisa Patel (Divorced); Sohaila Yazdani (Divorced); Captain Kiani Roistre (Divorced) |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | "Once you've changed the relationship between yourself and your environment, you cannot return to the blissful ignorance you left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective." - Liberator Shallash, "A Social History of Tellar Prime" Ford has an innate sense of adaptability. Understanding that life is an ongoing process, he has been willing to reinvent and renegotiate his circumstances time and again while retaining a joyful spirit. He tries not to dwell on the past (sometimes because it contains something he's actively running from) and instead embraces the excitement of the moment. He's generous with his time and abundant energy and soaks up the attention that comes from sharing it with others. He never shies away from social encounters and tries to take people as they come. He struggles with general impulse control, embracing a "shoot first, ask questions later" philosophy that has thankfully tempered over the years. Something of a sybarite, Ford has an impeccable sense of style and appreciation for the finer things in life, even when they're out of his reach. And in the pursuit of those "finer things," he engages in any number of vices (gambling, drinking, etc.) that are at odds with the abstinence of the more serious elements of the officer corps. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | "As soon as I saw you, I knew a grand adventure was about to happen." - Winnie the Pooh Ford believes life should be seen and felt rather than morosely dwelled upon, which has given him an adventurous and irrepressible spirit. He has excellent people skills and a sense of humor even in the darkest of times. He also comes with a wealth of experience from his long service with Starfleet. Unfortunately, he is easily bored. He's averse to conflict and says and does whatever is needed to quickly extract himself from contentious situations. Finally, he avoids making promises and commitments where at all possible. |
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| Ambitions | "There's no profit in honor." - Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #198 Profit, personal comfort, and maybe making a difference somewhere along the way. Maybe. Probably. |
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| Hobbies & Interests | "There is only one great tragedy in life: not getting what you want." - Promotional Campaign #11378, Risa Tourism Board Ford has a bad habit of picking up hobbies, obsessively engaging in them for a few years, and then dropping them. In recent memory, he's gone through Klingon opera, the creative vandalism of the youth gangs of Lithios Prime, entomology, Breen encryption, and recreating historical Terran methods of glassblowing. His current hobby is incorporating nanotechnology into synthetic leatherwear. Despite having only middling luck at them, he has an enduring love for games of chance, including dabo and tongo. Proximity to Cardassians during the post-Dominion War years exposed him to a number of Cardassian games and sheer tenacity and repetition has made him a passable kotra player. |
| Personal History | "Optical drive networks, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that. It's when you're standing behind a forcefield the thickness of a hair and a megaton of spinning trinesium goes flying by that you really find the divine in technology." - Anonymous Dockworker, Proxima Maintenance Yards, TarkaleanTelecom 3DVision Live Interview Fordyce "Ford" Kirschler was born in a squatter settlement on an L-class world known to locals as Port Boppa and 7274 Herschelii IV according to the Daystrom Institute's planetary classification system. The picture of willful isolation and self-imposed poverty in a land of plenty, it existed outside Federation jurisdiction, allowing for a sort of laissez-faire approach to governance that his mother and father shared when it came to parenting. In short, Ford's formative years were spent more with friends than family. His parents were supportive to the extent that he needed them to be but otherwise preferred to let him grow into himself according to his own whims. Life on an L-class planet was difficult, which definitely did not mesh with his "whims." At the appropriate age, he applied to Starfleet Academy under a non-resident program with the assumption that becoming an engineer was a golden ticket to riches. He was fairly well-educated, smart, and, above all, a politically attractive candidate given Starfleet's interests in the lithium reserves on 7274 Herschelii IV. But the discipline of Starfleet chafed against his independent spirit, and he barely scraped through the enlisted training program. He earned a reputation within the student body for disobedience, disorderly conduct, substance abuse, and partying. He was dead last on the list of candidates chosen for Starfleet's engineering program. He spent seven years in advanced training, which was more successful than his basic Academy career. The subjects were narrower and in fields that he enjoyed; there was a practical component to the study program; and he discovered a surprisingly enduring love and aptitude for engineering (surprising since nothing held his interest for long). He also discovered a love and aptitude for the production of synthetic "pharmaceuticals," which had him brought up on disciplinary charges. His career was saved only by the intervention of a free-spirited Denobulan instructor who admired Kirschler's "pluck." His benefactor, Dr. Phloben, also arranged for his first real posting with a project to construct a series of subspace communication relay stations deemed strategically important after the Battle of Maxia. The demands of the environment and evolving challenges suited Ford better than the classroom. With time and Phloben's mentorship, he came to better understand the value of teamwork, cooperation, and Starfleet's mission. His exit interview for the posting noted he was "a remarkable if not unconventional non-comm." Despite his successes, past events continued to haunt him, and he was given only one assignment option at the conclusion of Phloben's project: engineering aboard one of the fleet's aging Miranda-class vessels as it conducted routine planetary surveys for three years in the Beta Quadrant. Ford initially described the assignment as "an undocumented tenth circle of hell" but it proved to be crucial to helping him find his place within Starfleet. Aboard the old ship, he discovered that, unlike so many in the fleet, he didn't have to be defined by his work. He could make his contributions, participate in the system, but remain an individual with hobbies, interests, activities and a life outside of fleet service alone. Over the next three decades, he saw a variety of postings across Federation space, including Starfleet engineering liaison and consultant at the Liran Virodd Waste Processing and Conversion Complex on Bolarus IX; piracy interdiction duty during the Maquis-Cardassian conflict; service aboard three hospital ships during the Dominion War; worksite engineer with the Federation Cultural Rehabilitation Commission, which focused on post-war archeological preservation of sites damaged during the Dominion War; and several construction tours with colonial expansion projects. |