Name: Benjamin Morris Pryde
Previous Rank: Lieutenant (Senior Grade)
Age: 29
Affiliation: Free Worlds League

He was born on Atreus where he grew up playing with paper airplanes and any models he could con his parents into buying.

In School, he took any classes he could that would help him learn more about airplanes....English and other such classes were.......not exactly concentrated on...and his grades showed it.

At the age of 16, the school he was in on Atreus hosted an exchange student from Regulus. This younger cousin to the Duke of Regulus was a pompous fool, and one day Benjamin simply became tired of listening to his prattle. He vocally and publicly shamed the young noble, showing without a shadow of a doubt, how inept the young man was.

This gained him an enemy that has tried to hurt him many times. But the Pryde family have been Marik loyalists since the days of the Star League, and the Marik Commonwealth has carefully categorized the various sections of the family and look out for those still loyal to the Eagle. And there is a large amount of enmity between Marik and Regulus. Between this natural communication problem and Benjamin's skills with flying, the Regulan attempts at destroying his burgeoning career never worked.

He was, in fact, accepted into the Lloyd Marik-Stanley Aerospace School (in the New Greenland Mountains on New Olympia, Nicknamed "Garden of the Gods") because of his single-minded devotion to fighters, a trait that is rather rare in the modern world.

He graduated, barely, with high honors in anything to with flying, and nearly flunked anything that WASN'T to do with flying.

He went out into the real world where he was accepted into the 3^rd Free Worlds Guards: The League’s Blade. His first major action was in the invasion of Devils Rock during Operation Guerrero in 3057. He flew air-support for the lead-foots (his personal name for 'Mechs), and drew some honors for his flying. He later also performed well on Asuncion helping to bring the rebellious world back into the FWL fold.

He spent the next three or four years (depending on when this campaign starts) garrisoning the newly returned worlds until he ran afoul of the young man from his past, now his superior officer. Still an imbecilic noble, he ordered any peace breaker executed, no matter the severity of the crime. He also loved girls. A lot. But one of the girls he wanted didn’t want him and told him publicly. He tried to force her, and her brother stopped him with a black eye. The young noble arrested the brother for publicly attacking him and scheduled him for execution unless she followed his wishes.

Benjamin (in one of his few instances of pulling his head out of his aircraft) rescued the brother, but was caught by the noble just inside the command compound. With two gate guards closing in, Benjamin decked the noble and told the prisoner to run. The guards let him run since they "had to protect" the noble from Benjamin. Their mutual distaste with the noble’s "activities" had nothing to do with this decision of course as they told the court later.

This action resulted in two court martials. The noble was court martialed for abusing his power. But Benjamin HAD struck a superior officer, and he was court martialed for it. Both court martials were successful.

According to rumors, the noble has been accepted into a Regulan unit (officially for rehabilitation), but his activities are not frowned upon.

Benjamin, however, was not brought into a Marik Commonwealth unit. Assaulting a superior officer for ANY reason is an offense too public for his contacts in the region to override, so he was quietly informed that he should leave the FWL for a time. Those same contacts however, realize that the world probably would have rebelled had the noble’s activities continued, and will help Benjamin because of this.

Quietly. Under the table. Not publicly.

So he traveled to Outreach where he met Tokugawa Hiroshi and had some fun showing up another no good little idiot before being excepted into Henderson's Dark Knights, a new mercenary unit. On their first mission in the Chaos March he met Ribecka, ten years younger then he, and they began dating.

Lloyd Marik-Stanley Aerospace School in the New Greenland Mountains on New

Olympia, Nicknamed "Garden of the Gods".

(6) Too much desk work
[23]- Advanced Individual Training - Aerospace Pilot
[25]Real Life: Tour of Duty: Inner Sphere

(10) Conspicuous gallantry in the field and the death of your superior offer you a chance

for a field promotion: Lieutenant (Senior Grade)
[28]Real Life: Tour of Duty: Inner Sphere garrison duty

(Special) Struck superior officer (cousin of Duke of Regulus) and was discharged from

the military
[29]Real Life: Ne'er Do Well (7) Drifting from one location to the next, you meet many "interesting" people

Main life ideas:

His number one passion in life is flying....period.

His number two passion in life is tweaking his fighter so it flies BETTER.

Because of this, he has cobbled together some computers with design programs so he can virtual test design changes on his fighter before actually doing them.

Pretty much all of his time in spent either working on his computer trying to find another way to tweak his fighter, actually DOING the tweaking on his fighter, or flying his fighter and TESTING his tweaks.

Can you say he is obsessed? hehehe

When feeling too stressed, he performs some of the Ninjitsu moves he has learned, keeping himself in shape and relaxing himself.

Unfortunately, while he is a natural pilot, he is NOT a natural gunner. So his gunnery rating is MUCH lower then his piloting. He can target and he can hit......but isn't anywhere NEAR elite status in that regard. He can't feel where his opponent will move if evading.......but people swear
he can feel where a laser aimed at him is going and he never likes to be there.....;-)

Before being discharged, he was able to "misplace" his various awards and one dress uniform with all ranks and patches still on it. It is off-white with maroon edgings and shoulder boards, with the Marik Eagle and the symbol of the Marik Commonwealth on the left shoulder. The twin gold (one half-sized) bars of the senior grade Lieutenant adorn his collar and cuffs, while the symbol of aerospace arm and his unit patch (a gloved hand holding a long, narrow dagger with blood flowing down the blade) are sewn onto his left breast. His awards include the Distinguished Service Award with emerald, and two Conquest Ribbons. One red, purple bordered, with the name Devils Rock in black. The other is Green, purple bordered, with the name Asuncion in black.

His field uniform, of which he has managed to save a half dozen that he "misplaced", are olive green (unless you know the FWL field uniforms are a different color) with the Marik eagle above the left breast, and his rank on the left shoulder.