Argon

Argon Brand is a relatively uninspiring officer when you first meet him, but put him on the bridge of a capital ship and the short officer is quick to prove his worth.

Early Life (4 BBY - 14 ABY)
Argon was born to Melchior and Freda Brand on Corellia in Coronet City during the last years before the Rebellion finally struck a major blow. Melchior worked as a CorSec officer, mainly dealing with smuggling operations, while Freda is a respected doctor from an older, wealthy family. Both imparted a strong sympathy for the Republican ideal on their son, and later children, as they grew older.

Argon was never a terribly social child, and his lack of stature and manual dexterity rendered him less talented at various sports. This caused the child to become absorbed in books, taking to languages and the study of foreign cultures as a natural talent, though a lack of good reading material stymied those efforts for a little while. His skills with computers remained, and he worked with them in his spare time, though he did manage to pick up the Corellian language during this time. Melchior tried to get his son to aspire to be a CorSec officer like himself, but while Argon grew to disdain corruption from his father's stories of what smugglers did, he only desired to be part of the New Republic forces, to be part of something bigger than Corellia.

The various battles fought for Corellia caught his attention and the young Argon desired to be a part of the fighting, to get his name in the history books he so loved. An opportunity presented itself early in his eighteenth year, a mere couple of months before Corellia was retaken by the Empire, when Argon took the opportunity to enlist in the New Republic military, with an eye on either serving in StarOps or FleetOps.

Early Military Career (14 ABY-24 BBY)
Basic training was hard for Argon. Fortunately for him, his mental fortitude allowed him to persevere through the worst of it. Realizing that being a pilot was probably not the best use of his talents, and knowing that if he was ever stuck behind enemy lines he was ill-suited for surviving, he elected to go to the Naval Academy to join FleetOps as an officer. It was during his early months at the academy he learned of Corellia's fall, which drove him to work harder in an effort to do what he could for the New Republic. He was able to get word from his family that they were all right, to his relief. He firmly believes that his maternal family's name and wealth proved a factor in this.

As Argon neared completion of his training, he had to pick between two routes, Fleet Intelligence or working aboard a capital ship. After a dismal showing at the blaster range, Argon elected to go for the option that had something shooting for you, and became a gunnery officer aboard a Corellian Gunship assigned to patrolling shipping lanes near Bespin hunting down pirates, which included a few heated skirmishes with Imperial forces.

After a tour in the shipping lanes, Argon was able to get himself posted aboard a cruiser dealing with slavers and smugglers in the Kashyyk system, picking up Shyriwook and Bocce over this time, and furthering his education of Binary when time permitted. His reputation as a gunnery officer grew, though he had eyes on a bigger prize.

Argon was later given the opportunity to serve as the executive officer of a Marauder corvette and a promotion to lieutenant commander, which he took, though the ship served in a few actions, none of its actions were overly noteworthy, the commanding officer was a bit too hesitant to volunteer his ship and crew for missions and was as conservative as possible when it came to making tactical decisions. After a year of serving as an executive officer, the commanding officer of the Lightbringer was promoted, and Argon accepted the offer to command it.

25 ABY - Present
Argon grew a slight reputation as the Lightbringer's commander. While he was no Han Solo, he was an occasional risk taker, though sometimes his decisions were tempered by the cold reality of facts. Smugglers and pirates learned to avoid his presence, as more than a few were left as debris in space fights with him. One opportunity for him and his crew to shine was when his ship was selected to scout out Bothan space for the impending attack on Bothawui, which was achieved at no loss of life to the Lightbringer's crew.