Vladimir Goldmark

"Dead men do tell tales..."

— Vlad

Lieutenant JG Vladimir Goldmark is the Coroner on board the USS Champlain, under the command of Captain Edward Wolfe. He is a 35 year old Human with a quarter Reman[1] blood. He is played as an NPC by GrannyGM.

Vlad is six feet four inches tall, lean-muscled, and imposing. His soft, but noticeable, Reman features sometimes combine with his size to give some pause to those who first meet him, especially in the low-light conditions he favors. However, his smile is genuinely friendly, despite the sharpness of his teeth… and he shares enough of his beautiful Human mother’s heritage to be considered handsome by some… once they get used to him.

Vlad sees better in the dark than most humanoids, and his sharp senses tend to function more strongly in low light conditions. He has very limited telepathy which manifests mostly as psychometry… thus, he is especially adept at deciphering the meaning of details found when examining a corpse, or the weapons found at the scene of a crime. Sometimes, it seems almost as if he can discern a deceased individual’s last thoughts. However, since he still has to prove it, he keeps his standard technical skills as sharp as his teeth. He is also very accurate at throwing sharp objects. His friends call him the Undertaker.

Ancestry

Vlad’s grandfather on his father’s side was a Reman shock trooper who escaped from his Romulan commanders and hid on Turkaran IV around 2345. His grandmother, Shanda Myre, was the daughter of Federation citizens on Turkaran just before it’s separation from the Federation. She became a victim of a rape gang in which the Reman participated when she was 14… the night before her family was scheduled to escape.

The family did escape, but all did not go as planned. They made their rendezvous with the private shuttle Shanda’s father, a doctor, had arranged to transport them to a safer Federation colony, but on route out of the system, the shuttle was attacked and badly damaged. Off-course and without adequate control systems, the craft crashed on a habitable but relatively low-tech world, peopled by an isolationist humanoid race of unknown origin. Shanda was the only survivor.

One of the families on the planet took Shanda in. They were kind enough in their way, but provincial and suspicious of that which they did not understand. When it became clear that the girl was pregnant, their people began to study the equipment left behind in the crashed shuttle diligently… they were sufficiently technologically advanced to understand what it was, but they did not know how to activate the signaling systems that might bring Shanda’s people to pick her up. However, as her pregnancy became increasingly difficult, they redoubled their efforts.

After almost a year of diligent study, the isolated community’s top minds succeeded in activating the signal beacons. But it was too late for Shanda. She had died giving birth to a child that to her adoptive family appeared to be a monster. It was humanoid and obviously male, but the pale, yellow-eyed creature screamed every time the sun shown on it. Feeding time was a nightmare, especially when they discovered by accident that it had a taste for fresh blood. The couple that had cared for Shanda found themselves being shunned by their neighbors… some even encouraged them to kill the child. Had not a nearby Federation ship received the signaling beacon when they did, the well-meaning but increasingly frightened couple might not have been able to preserve Shanda’s strange child’s life much longer.

The commander of the away team sent to the surface to collect the child and the shuttle’s logs spoke only briefly with the planet’s representatives before being requested to leave and never come back. She obliged, forwarding the planet’s passionate lack of interest in maintain further interstellar contact to Starfleet, and turned the child over to her ship’s doctor.

When the boy’s story was pieced together and his half-Remun heritage was determined, Federation officials sought a suitable home for their ward. A couple was found in one of the mining colonies on Janus VI who were willing to adopt him… and the conditions there suited his physiological needs. So, the nameless orphan soon became Pavel Goldmark, son of human extraction engineer Sam Goldmark and Doctor Danika Goldmark.

The Goldmarks did not care what their child looked like, or what the neighbors thought… in fact, they found Pavel’s pale, ridged skin, sharp teeth, and yellow eyes exotically attractive; and his pointed ears rather cute. They encouraged Pavel to see his differences not as disabilities, but as opportunities to develop talents that few others had at his level. When Pavel grew up, he followed his natural tendencies into the colony’s police force, where he became a detective in record time. He married the lovely human biologist Myri Linderman and settled down to raise his own family, safe from the sun in the mines.

Background

Vladimir, named after his adoptive mother’s father, was born to Pavel and Myri in 2372. He had a happy childhood, but he found the mines restrictive. Ever a curious youth, he spent many hours following his parents and grandparents around, and did may odd jobs for them, thus learning much about the practical aspects of their respective trades. He was not as sensitive to light as his father, and could function on the surface with little assistance aside from eye protection… simple UV resistant tinted glasses such as had been used for the purpose for hundreds of years were enough.

He also found it easier to move among a broader cross section of the interstellar public that came to do business on the busy mining planet, as his Reman features, while still evident, were less prominent. He was especially fascinated with the representatives of Starfleet that he encountered. Through the use of his limited telepathy and the numerous translation devices available on Janus VI, he spent countless boyhood hours talking with his favorite playmate, the Maraht the Horta, about how wonderful it would be to journey among the stars.

When his time came and his basic education on Janus VI was complete, he made arrangements to join Starfleet through the local recruiting office, shook his father’s scaly hand, carefully kissed his tearful mother goodbye, and found his way to Earth, to the Academy in San Francisco. There he studied Forensic Biology, thus combining his interests in science, medicine and police investigation. He has had training in general pathology, medical examination, and criminal investigation as adjuncts to his primary training as a coroner.

While at the Academy, Vlad discovered that the Federation was in some turmoil… and that those of mixed race, especially combinations like his, were not as welcomed in the mainstream as they had once been. It seemed to him that the Admiral and self-proclaimed President Doenitz was little better than the Romulans that had so long enslaved his Reman ancestors. So, through the subtle machinations of sympathetic instructors, he was assigned to the 52nd Fleet, where he has been serving ever since.

Medical Record

Vlad wears tinted glasses to protect his eyes from damage from excessive light, considering that he considers corrective surgery for the condition to be more invasive than is warranted. He does have a certain amount of skin sensitivity from his Reman ancestry, but his human heritage largely compensates unless he is exposed to direct sun for an extended period of time.

==Hobbies ==

Vlad is an amateur wrestler. He enjoys studying metallurgy, and occasionally tries his hand at casting small sculptures. He has received fairly respectable compensation in trade for some of his pieces.

He keeps a pet Pyrithian bat named Vesna, which means "messenger". Vesna tends to be skittish around strangers, but she is quite tame to Vlad's hand, and can often be found perched contentedly on his shoulder when he is working alone in the morgue.

Assignments

Vlad has had several assignments prior to his current one on the recently launched USS Champlain as the ship’s coroner. He wears Science/Medical teal, but he has found that sometimes he might as well have on a gold collar, as his job spans several areas of specialization, including security. Different ships are organized differently… on one he found himself titled SO, on another, MO. From time to time, he has considered that perhaps this is because few want to give excessive thought to the morgue at all, so it tends to get shuffled around from department to department as per the needs of the individual ship.