Bravo Fleet
Summary
The Commanding Officer of the USS Canterbury and the Canterbury Division, on the surface Murphy had it all. The son of an admiral, he has a solid service record and a good reputation… the kind of guy everyone wants to take home to meet the family.
That was until his ‘stay’ with pirates. Murphy returned a different man. After a short, and very intensive, round of therapy with a specialist counsellor, Murphy has returned to duty as the CO of the Canterbury and to command the division.
Appearance
Standing at just over 6’, Murphy is broad-shouldered with a physique that owes a lot to time spent in the gym and a high metabolism. Murphy has never met a physical exercise he didn’t like, and often burns off excess energy either lifting weights or boxing.
He has ‘golden-boy’ handsome looks, with dark blonde hair and blue eyes. One is a replacement after an injury incurred in the line of duty, but excellent cosmetic work has minimised the scarring around the site, with only a small amount visible on the eyelid when he closes his eye.
Personality
Murphy looks a certain way, and he both knows and uses it. He is charming and eloquent, but he can also be manipulative when he needs to be to achieve his goal. This is an element of his personality that he actively works against. It took him a long time to work out traumas from a childhood where winning was everything, and only success was rewarded.
He has fought past that to become the man he always wanted to be, even if he sometimes feels a little divorced from the image he projects. He very much feels like he ‘fakes it until he makes it’ but his close friends would say that does him a disservice. Once he has let someone close, he is loyal to a fault. His love language is acts of service.
Unfortunately, recent events during his captivity, brought out the more ruthless elements of Murphy’s personality. Amnesia coupled with an ability to compartmentalise, and a suppressed knack for violence was required for him to affect an escape, and that was a black hole he disappeared into for a while.
After some intensive therapy with a specialist trauma counsellor aboard SBB, Murphy has made a good recovery and has been cleared for service again, but he still has onward effects from this period. He still has nightmares and fears a regression to that person again.
History
Early Life
Zachary Murphy was born the second son of James Edward Murphy and Evangeline Maria Murphy, on the USS Dante, which James commanded at the time. With a glittering career, James was the perfect, handsome Starfleet Captain.
That was only half of the story. What people didn’t see was that James Murphy demanded absolute perfection from his family or there were consequences. All of Edward’s children lived in absolute fear of his mercurial temper.
He dragged his young family along with him on all his postings, until the little charade of being a family man no longer served his purposes. When it didn’t, Maria and the children; Zachary, his older brother Edward, and their younger sister Iris, were packed back off to Earth.
Throughout their childhoods, the three children were only given attention or rewarded when they had good grades or were winning at whatever sport or hobby their father insisted they take up. Bad grades or coming second place were punished with withdrawal of any kind of parental attention. Their mother tried to ameliorate this but James ruled his family with an iron rod.
Being the more sporting and outgoing of the three children, Zach often found himself protecting his siblings. Either through monopolising their father’s attention to keep it off the more sensitive Edward, or the quieter Iris, or through playing up so he would be the focus of Jame’s ire.
Unfortunately this was never enough for James, who focused on Edward particularly. When Zach was seventeen, Edward went to Starfleet Academy, and for six months was the apple of James’s eye. Until he dropped out, and essentially disappeared.
Starfleet Academy
A year later, when he was eighteen, Zach sought and gained acceptance to the Academy himself. Unlike a lot of students, he passed the entrance examinations first time, which James was ecstatic about. What his father didn’t realise was that Zach had studied extensively for a year beforehand, in addition to his normal studies, to ensure he got through first time, and then piled on the charm. That, coupled with his family name, ensured his success.
Once in the academy, Zach put all his efforts into finding his brother. Eventually, at the beginning of the second year, he was successful. Edward was living not far from the academy campus, earning a living as a musician. He made Zach vow to never reveal his location to their father.
It was at the academy that Zach met Darion Thayer. The two couldn’t have been more different, the admiral’s son and the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, but they became firm friends. Darion was instrumental in helping Zach find Edward.