Astor Cohen

Astor is a freelance hired gunman. Although he had once served in the Alliance with Cassondra Shepard, several years of disagreements with Alliance officials between the nature of his execution methods of the guilty caused for his separation from service and sparked the beginning of his freelance career.

When politics started entering in the decisions of who was found guilty by the justice system, he refused to carry out orders to dispose of the innocent targets; and many times he fulfilled that duty on the deserving. Many of those he brought his own justice to were very important political and wealthy figures. The Alliance kept these incidents under wraps and released Astor from service. The Alliance removed all records of these occurrences and reported Astor's severance as an honorary discharge.

History
Astor was born on Earth. As a child, he was always socially awkward and extremely protective of his close family. When he was 6, his mother had just given birth to a baby girl, and Astor became immediately protective of her. On Astor's 8th birthday his family took a camping trip to celebrate. After setting up the camp, Astor's parents went to a small town near the campsite to pick up a few supplies, leaving him in charge of watching his sister - as they figured the trip would be very quick. Unbeknown to them, there had been an escaped convict using the area as a hideout. He had heard the commotion of the campsite, and fearing he would be found out, opened fire on Astor and his sister then fled immediately. Astor was shot in his side. He fell to the ground, losing copious amounts of blood. His 2 year old sister had fallen next to him, struggling for life. After a few moments, pushing through the pain of his wound, he pulled himself close enough to hold her. He lied there, trying to comfort her with his remaining strength.

She died in his arms a few minutes later.

Astor had spent several months recovering in the hospital, revisiting that horrifying day over and over again in his mind. He swore revenge in any form possible. He imagined the scenario of murdering the faceless man countless times - each with more violence and detail and feeling progressively satisfied at even the slightest thought of enacting his kill. When he was released from the hospital, the thought began to envelop him increasingly, until he became obsessed and restless.

About a year later, he began slaughtering small animals - predators - to feed his desire for bloodshed. He contributed his kills to the idea of avenging his sister. His brain had now started to transform the act of "vigilante" killing with a burst of adrenaline-fueled euphoria, eventually turning it into an addiction.

Astor's father, fearing these continued actions to result in the seizure of his son by authorities, spent countless hours and resources investigating this behavior and possible treatment. Astor found himself unable to control his violent urges and continued the slaughters to feed his addiction.

By the time he was 16, he became more aware of the spreading atrocities and injustice caused by man. His need for violent reprisal against the offenders grew to a larger scale. He began to take his retribution upon humans and aliens alike, expanding his ruthless and intricate methods to murder his targets.

Astor's father, desperate to keep his son's addiction concealed, pleaded with Astor to join the Alliance military. He explained he would be given legal authority to kill. Astor, already burdened with the unending guilt of the death of his sister and the mental anguish he was putting his father through, agreed without question.

Training and Execution
After joining the Alliance military at his father’s request, Astor had become isolated and relinquished his focus and time into weapons training. He became especially skilled at using the assault rifle (which is now his weapon of choice….next to his whip, of course). He had also spent a large portion of his training in hand-to-hand combat styles. This knowledge became a gateway into his research into more brutal and painful methods of targets to pacify his addiction (to what he perceives as “justifiable violence”). These methods have been known to include:
 * The use of chemical substances created to prolong a subject’s life while still enabling the body to feel pain
 * Extensive research on the most sensitive nerve stimulus areas on the bodies of multiple species
 * Various species pain threshold limitations before causing fatality
 * General anatomy of various species, specifying in nervous system function

Notable Relationships
While in basic training for the Alliance, Astor had taken a keen interest in Cassondra Shepard. She had demonstrated a passion for violence that Astor could empathize with. He had constantly felt inner turmoil over his obsessive need for brutality, shaming himself and rationalizing this shame as an excuse for isolation. When he observed similar aggressive behavior in Cassondra, he began to grow increasingly empathetic towards her. Subconsciously this had awakened his protective nature, and he always kept a close watch over her and her safety. Astor kept a vigilant eye over Cassondra for several weeks before noticing several other cadets becoming hostile towards her. Cassondra was excelling in her biotic training and gaining favor of their superiors. The cadets had become resentful of her accelerated progress in the Academy, due to her taboo background. Their first encounter face to face happened when the aggressive cadets had made a plan to sneak into her barracks while she was sleeping and attempt to castigate her to the point of being immobilized for a generous amount of time. Astor had been keeping a close watch over the group’s activities, and had followed them to Cassondra’s barracks. Before they could initiate their attack, Astor incapacitated them and broke several bones of each of the perpetrators, rendering them basically useless for an extended amount of time.

“It was the first and last time I let those deserving to die…continue to live.” Ever since that night, they had always a sort of protective bond, one helping the other when in a dangerous situation. They never spoke much of their pasts, and never pried each other for that information either. They had an unspoken understanding of not diving into deep personal emotions and conversations. Despite this, they still seemed to open up to each other in the sense of comfort and lighter conversation topics. They had a unique friendship, but it never developed past that….for the most part, anyways.

He also finds Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko to be a respectfully admirable Commander with great hair and a manly sexiness to him.

Introduction into ME Universe
Once Astor had left the Alliance, he found his lack of social adeptness to be of great hindrance. He had decided his only remaining option was to be a hired gun man. However, much of the time that particular profession requires many connections. Fearing no other alternative from his social anxiety, he sought work through the Shadow Broker. While the Shadow Broker can be held accountable for many deeds leading to tragedies befalling innocents, Astor rationalized their collaboration with the understanding that the Shadow Broker’s information is in turn helping several innocents by providing guilty and deserving targets to assassinate.

When he heard news that Cass had died, he would not believe it, and has since then had kept in close contact with the Shadow Broker waiting for any new information regarding her whereabouts. Once he got intel from the Shadow Broker detailing Cerberus’ “Project Lazarus,” he had tracked her down and kept a vigilant watch over her and her safety, as he had always done. It wasn’t until hearing about the rather large bounty on her head had he become truly scared that her life might be in jeopardy. And so, he infiltrated the plans of all those planning to collect the reward and anonymously sent her a message containing the confiscated information. Knowing she was too stubborn not to heed his warning and would come anyways, he included in his warning the whereabouts of the bounty hunters’ plans on Omega, and waited for her arrival. He figured at least this way he could be there to assist her in taking out her foes. While trying to be discreet about trailing the bounty hunters, he was eventually discovered and held for a couple of hours in an Omega alley for brutal “questioning”. Cass had showed up shortly after, and the two proceeded to take out the bounty hunters – Astor had taken this opportunity to satisfy his violence addiction for the time being, and showed no mercy upon them.

After all was said and done, Cass offered to take Astor back to The Normandy SR-2 designated to John Shepard to recuperate from the incident.

Notable Events
Shortly upon arriving at the Normandy, he became immediately aware of the rather exciting events that seem to occur. There had seemed to be an occurrence known as Opposite Day 2 that was affecting the crew members. Before leaving the shuttle, Cassondra Shepard had displayed rather strange and disturbing behavior, so he decided to sleep in the shuttle that night. He still stands by his intuition that it was probably one of the best decisions he has made to date. Notable events that Astor has been involved in:
 * The Zombie Apocalypse, where he and Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko “heroically and with varying degrees of sexiness drew the zombie horde away from the med bay…”
 * There had been a riot on Folsom, endangering PAGA’s family. He lended his services to accompany the mission sent to liberate PAGA’s family and put down the rebellion.
 * Commander Zachary Shepard had another bitchin’ pool party (see: Zach's Normandy ), in which Astor was delighted to attend.