Eric Mourning

Eric Mourning is a former Alliance recruit and former mercenary. He is a vanguard, though he prefers stealth to direct confrontations. While being a highly skilled marksman, his biotic abilities are quite potent as well. He is solitary and secretive, trusting and relying on only himself.

Pre-MET History (Early Life)
Eric was born on Earth on March 13th 2160. Raised in the slums of Dublin and orphaned at the age of 7 with his 1 year old sister Layla, he quickly fell into one of the many gangs to scrounge up a living. But, at 11, after a bloody gang war that left many dead, he left the gang and supported his sister through small thefts. Despite having no gang affiliations any longer, former rivals continued to threaten him and his sister. Finally, at age 13, he fought and killed two gang members when they broke into the underground tunnel he had made home. For 3 years he continued to steal to support himself and his sister, and often killing the violent gang members that plagued the region. One day, he returned to the tunnel to find his sister gone. In a rampage, he decimated the gangs to find her, killing dozens before finally accepting the gang members pleas of innocence.

After a year, at 17, with no leads to his sister's location, Eric joined the Alliance. He quickly learned of his latant biotic abilities and trained as a Vanguard. The ease of his training surprised his superiors, though his distaste for close combat despite his skill was looked at with amusement. He was eventually granted secondary marksman training. However, his harsh nature soon brought scrutiny. After only a year and a half, at 19 he was already reprimanded twice for aggression in non hostile confrontations. Just before he turned 20, Eric was part of a rescue team responding to a distress call for a fledling human colony on the edge of the Traverse. The colony bore signs of a Batarian slaver raid, as well as the crashed remains of an unregistered vessel.

After command refused his request to track the slavers, Eric simply left the Alliance without warning. For two years he tracked and hunted several Batarian slaver crews, working his way through the smaller groups and forcing information out of them before executing them. Salvaging several small shuttles and tens of thousands of credits, he eventually bought and outfitted his ship, The Eyrie. This earned him a reputation along the Traverse, despite keeping his identity hidden. Eventually, he was contacted while tracking a Batarian crew and offered a substantial sum for a job. After intense research and deciding that his targets were indeed brutal drug and weapon dealers, he accepted the job. After completion he took his payment from what turned out to be the rival gang. Three days later his former clients died from an accidental explosion of one of their weapons cache. He continued to accept contracts he deemed honourable.

At 23, During one of these contracts, tracking a slaver on a small moon, Eric discovered a crashed ship in flames. Among the wreckage and bodies strewn over the area, he found a teenage girl wearing a small pendant emblazened with a Celtic cross, the gift he had been given by his father before his death. The gift he had given her when she had turned 7. Downloading the scant remnants of data that had seemingly been purged and recovering the bodies, he took them to a medical facility for proper identification. Testing confirmed that the teenage girl was Layla and also showed intense trauma to her brain and central nervous system that was the result of intentional surgical procedures. Investigating the remnants of data he had downloaded, he only found vague and sporadic references to biotic expirementation and fragments of a correspondence between the team leader and a figure only referred to as The Illusive Man.

After this discovery Eric stopped taking contracts and focused only on finding this figure. This eventually led him to discovering the existence of Cerberus and the ship with a direct tie to The Illusive Man: the Normandy SR-2.

Introduction to Twitterverse
During the hunt for The Illusive Man, Eric learned of a man that sometimes stayed on the ship: Caleb. Tracking him through the various bounties placed on the man, Eric eventually found and tagged him with a tracer chip, leading him to the Normandy. After several long days of research and impatient growling, Eric eventually snuck onto the ship only to be thwarted by the strange spacial qualities of the ship and a stubborn Cassondra Shepard. After a surprisingly peaceful negotiation, Eric agreed to think about her proposition to hunt down the information that the commander of that vessel, John Shepard, might have.

Psychological Profile
Eric is a solemn and secretive individual, his life driven by an intense sense of personal honour and a harsh view of justice. Despite his history of violence, his first recourse is not violence. He only kills those he feels have earned it through deed or when his life or the life of someone he cares about is threatened.

He is quite confident in his own abilities, few ever having pushed him to any level of meaningful exertion when confronted. However, due to being orphaned and the sole provider for his sister he lacks the ease and familiarity with personal and intimate relationships. This was further worsened with the disagreement with the Alliance's position on the Batarian slavers and then the years of intense solitude as he tracked and hunted them down. He prefers the quiet and controlled enviroment of The Eyrie to human contact, headaches often following long engagements of interpersonal contact.

With the stress of his life and the sorrow over discovering his sister's fate, he has relied on alcohol to help dull the feelings and numb the pain. Often, he quietly sits or stands, staring off into space and losing himself to his memories.

Trivia

 * Eric maintains a noticeable Irish accent
 * Eric wears the pendant, hidden by his clothing, as a reminder
 * Eric has an intense love of Irish, old Gaelic and Celtish folk music
 * Eric is a loyal Shamrock Rovers F.C. and Irish National team fan
 * Eric has several scars, his most prominent being the scar on the back and side of his neck just under his left ear, a souvenir from his crew leader before the bloody gang war that made him decide to leave the gang
 * Eric draws to help calm himself and focus
 * Despite going AWOL, Eric frequently travels in Alliance controlled space