Gavin Dunn/Alternate

Gavin Dunn was a human smuggler, musician, and captain of the Argo-class freighter Chancer and its successors. Born far from the, Gavin grew to resent the for its efforts to control the colonies without being able to protect them. Their failure to live up to the responsibilities contributed to the deaths of his brother and father, and ultimately led him to join the Humanity Liberation Front on. Gavin was deeply devoted to the Insurrection, justifying to himself and Redmond Venter the use of child soldiers in their ever-more desperate struggle. Only when their methods killed someone he'd cared about did he realize the horror of their terror attacks, and gave up the HLF's location to the UNSC before fleeing the planet. Wanted by both sides, Gavin fled to the Outer Colonies as a freelance starship captain transporting cargo and passengers between worlds, often taking on jobs outside the law to make a living.

Biography
AAO =

Early Life (2531-2545)
Gavin was born the second of three children to first-generation colonial parents on  whom had emigrated from the North American city of Seattle on  while his mother, Sarah, had been pregnant with him. His father Corey worked as an assistant dockmaster for the colony's singular planetside spaceport, a job that didn't pay exceptionally well, but was steady work and enough to get the family by. Gavin, his older brother James, and his younger sister Melete grew up watching the starships come and go overhead, each dreaming of one day flying with them.

When Gavin was about eight years old, construction of the was completed, terminating in Emerald City, Oz, making Castaway lose its early bid to become the colonial capital. As fewer ships expended the extra fuel coming down through the atmosphere, the Castaway Spaceport was forced to cut wages and lay off workers, Corey very narrowly keeping his job. Fortunately James, now sixteen, got a job with the ferry companies that delivered people and cargo between Emerald Cove's archipelagos, which had greatly benefited from the business the elevator brought. The extra income improved their quality of living, and Gavin intended to help by joining him as soon as he was old enough.

But less than a year later, while carrying cargo for forces that had replaced the  as the planet's military garrison not so long ago, Jack's ferry was torn apart by one of the fierce storms that were prone to occur in the warm, shallow oceans. Because they had been given the UNSC's uniform training, the local Marines were unprepared to handle the unorthodox jobs the CMA had done and took too long to respond. Other civilian boats arrived in the area before, and found James' body drifting, likely to have been knocked unconscious and fallen overboard to drown. Corey blamed the UNSC for his son's death, and not knowing much better, Gavin began to emulate that resentment. {|style="width:100%;"
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Falling Off the Grid
In addition to mourning James' death, the family was forced into harder times without the support he'd brought them. After several years, the security of Corey's job became uncertain, and he left it to return to his career as a spacer when he got word of a ship in need of a crew. Although it would mean spending weeks away at a time, the sum they were offering to smuggle stolen warship ordnance from the shipyards on would assure they could maintain their quality of living for months. Still enamored with the idea of space travel, Gavin begged to come along, which his father of course refused. However, after mentioning the matter to his crewmates, their captain decided to encourage bringing him along as cabin boy, eventually bringing Corey around by offering a half share for Gavin.

Reality proved far different than what he'd imagined, tasked with doing what he considered everyday chores. While the crew all agreed the trip was going well, Gavin was quickly bored, discovering slipspace travel essentially came down to not seeing stars outside and being stuck on the ship for two weeks until they reached Skopje. When at last their transition ended, Gavin finally started to enjoy himself, from looking down on the planet in orbit to exploring the urban sprawls that far surpassed anything on Emerald Cove. He didn't have long to play tourist, however, as their job ran on a schedule. Meeting with Insurrectionist plants within the shipyard, Corey, Gavin, and the rest of the crew took possession of the lead-lined crates and returned with them to their ship's berth.

Laying over for the night to rest, refuel, and see if they could make any extra credits by taking on more legitimate cargo on their return journey, Gavin started to get a basic education on ships from one of the technicians late in the evening. While inspecting the ship's landing strut hydraulics, the hangar was suddenly stormed by colonial police led by an Inspector Harding, having uncovered the parties responsible for the missing military-grade weapons. Gavin was hastily ordered to hide in the alcove where the landing gear retracted and hid listening as his father and the rest of the crew were taken into custody. As he was neither officially on either a crew or passenger manifest, Gavin was overlooked while the ship was impounded. By the time one of the crew mentioned him in interrogation and policemen sent back to find him, Gavin had already wandered off into the streets.

Street Urchin
"I hate it that every time that wannabe British bastard comes around, he thinks I owe him something. It's all Moa plop."

- Gavin to another urchin.

After his first night was spent wandering the city's streets, Gavin felt he'd be most secure back at the ship and returned, only to find it had been moved by Skopje's authorities. Scared he'd been left behind, he spent several hours hiding and crying before emerging again to find help, but to his further distress found that not even most doors would open for him without a civilian ID card. Becoming hungry after a while, Gavin tried to take something to eat from a market stall and was suddenly pursued by a member of the constabulary which had seen him. After he ducked under an to hide, Gavin was saved by a passerby who misdirected the policeman and coaxed him out of hiding, who turned out to be a member of the rebel cell behind the weapons smuggling. The man brought him back to their safehouse for a meal and one night of good sleep, where he was introduced to the Insurrectionist Major Jonathan Ulan, who lectured him on the morality of their conflict with the UNSC, most of which he was too young to understand, before being sent on his way in the morning.

As he left, however, Gavin was stopped by the same policeman as before, Inspector Reginald Harding, who'd been investigating the safehouse. Mistaking him for one of the many illegal colonists that took refuge in the city's streets, Harding made a deal with Gavin not to arrest him in exchange for going back in and getting evidence on Ulan and his plans. The information Gavin brought him allowed Reginald to uncover and stop an attempted bombing of a bridge by Ulan, an event that would one day lead to his involvement in Project: FREELANCER. In two years meantime, however, Reginald would call upon Gavin and the band of other urchins he'd fallen in with a number of times to help him in bringing a number of organized crime members to justice, referring to the group as "the Irregulars."

Stowaway to Cabin Boy
In 2547, two years after Gavin's arrival on Skopje, Harding was investigating another possible smuggling syndicate, this time illegal drugs instead of stolen weapons. Gavin followed the trail to Captain Tom Spender's Argo-class freighter Chancer, and snuck aboard to search the ship. While he found a number of containers concealed within hidden compartments, the crew returned while Gavin was still searching. Hiding in the myriad of hollowed-out sections of the old freighter, Gavin intended to slip out again at the soonest opportunity, but knew as soon as he felt the engines powering up that he wouldn't get the chance. The Chancer lifted off, beginning its trip to and taking Gavin with it.

The smuggling compartments were enough to keep him hidden for three standard days during the slipspace jump, but Spender finally caught him after emerging to steal from the galley. After some debate, the captain decided to treat Gavin as a passenger who had to pay his way, and put him to work on the most routine tasks that needed doing. Gavin had had experience with these particular jobs once before on his father's ship, leading him to think of his family for the first time in a long while. Spender took a liking to the boy, and after they reached their destination, offered Gavin a permanent job aboard the ship. Finding life aboard the Chancer a step up from Skopje's slums, he was eager to accept.

Gavin's next six years were spent aboard the aging freighter, learning the spacer's trade from the more experienced members of the crew. Because he had been signed on as an extra set of hands, he was able to spend time assisting with each of the necessary duties involved in running a small vessel, from repairing and maintaining mechanical systems to plotting slipspace jumps and flying the ship. Perhaps his most important lessons, however, came from Spender himself, including how to acquire a job in the first place. Gavin also picked up a liking for rock music from some of his shipmates, and bought his first guitar at a shop in to learn in his spare time.

Meanwhile, the steady advance of the Human-Covenant War was quickly condensing humanity's population on their remaining worlds, and while the flood of refugees often made contracts easier to come by, illicit ones became harder to hide from the UNSC on Inner Colonies with renewed surveillance measures. In July 2552, the Chancer had landed in, , to pick up a shipment of porpoise meat, hunted illegally by poachers, and smuggle it off-world when a fleet arrived in the system. Though the planet was not immediately glassed and the alien battlegroup was driven off temporarily by a single UNSC destroyer, they had landed a large number of ground troops, which invaded the nearby cities with the intention of locating Forerunner relics stored within. The local Army garrison responded, along with a strike force of Marines and ODSTs, but neither was able to hold off the much larger Covenant army.

As the remaining UNSC troops fell back, they were forced to abandon Cote d'Azure's modest spaceport and any hope of evacuating the civilian population. The more desperate civilians stayed behind, however, close to repairing a handful of ships that'd been disassembled for maintenance including the Chancer, which only needed fuel to break orbit and jump to slipspace. But before they'd finished refueling, legions of stormed the landing pads, using grenades to sabotage and destroy the grounded vessels. Spender's freighter was fortunate to have several others between it and the aliens, buying them some time, and leaving Gavin aboard to keep watch on the refueling, Spender led his crew in taking up arms to hold them off just long enough. As they also tried to fight off other civilians, begging or trying to force their way onto the last ships, they were all quickly killed before fueling was complete. Though horrified, Gavin had the sense to take off on his own and escape, staying in orbit long enough to see Cote d'Azure destroyed not by the Covenant, but by a UNSC bomb.

Partly traumatized by the sight of his shipmates and hundreds of others slaughtered without anyone to protect them, Gavin made several aimless slipspace jumps away from Sigma Octanus. With the ship to himself and nowhere else to go, Gavin decided to return home to Emerald Cove, wondering if the rumors he'd heard of it being abandoned meant it'd been invaded, too. He arrived to find the colony unscathed, but advisory COM buoys informed him that the entire population had been evacuated, abandoning the planet due to incidents of small Covenant ships landing on some of the remote islands. Undeterred, he touched down in Castaway and found some of the colonists, his family included, had been unwilling to leave what little they had and risked staying.

Though the presence of Covenant on the same planet as his mother and sister scared him, he was still overjoyed to be reunited with them. Their reunion was somewhat dampened, however, when he learned his father had died, executed by Skopje's colonial government for aiding the Insurrection. Reflecting on the part the UEG had played in his life, costing him family members and abandoning colonists in need of protection, Gavin came to the conclusion that their distant rule had been hurting the lives and livelihoods of the colonies for far too long. Leaving his home once again, Gavin took his freighter and contacted Redmond Venter, a friend he'd met in his time as a cabin boy, and agreed to join the Insurrection on.

Agent of the Assembly
Exiles =
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Early Life (2531-2540)
"This isn't fun! I'm supposed to be fighting pirates, not cleaning bathrooms!"

- Gavin on his first day working aboard a ship.

Gavin was born to a pair of first-generation colonists on Paradiso, one of the larger settled islands on. Growing up around Castaway's modest spaceport where his father Corey worked, Gavin grew up watching the starships come and go overhead, and dreamed of one day flying with them. However, when he was eight, construction of an in Emerald City, Oz, made it less expensive for ships to dock in orbit and let the elevator deliver their cargoes to the surface, forcing the spaceport to cut wages and lay off workers. Corey narrowly kept his job, and Gavin's older brother James soon began working with the ferry companies that carried goods and passengers between the planet's archipelagos, which had greatly benefited from the business the elevator brought.

Although the extra income improved their family's quality of living for a time, less than a year later James was killed when one of Emerald Cove's fearsome tropical storms caused his ferry to capsize and drowned. His body was found by civilian boats while the, which had recently usurped control of the planet's garrison from the , was still mounting a response, being poorly trained for its watery conditions where their predecessors had been prepared. Since the ferry had been carrying the UNSC's own supplies at the time, Corey blamed the UNSC for his son's death, and not knowing better, Gavin began emulating his resentment.

Without James to help support the family and the security of his job at the spaceport uncertain, Corey began looking for another means of earning credits. When he heard of a ship, the Double-Aught Shovel, anticipating a large profit on a smuggling run and in need of a crew, the former spacer returned to his old career. Gavin begged to come along, but as he'd kept the smuggling part of his job a secret, Corey refused. It didn't stop him, however, and he stowed away in the freighter's cargo bay. By the time he was discovered, they were already in the middle of a jump, and despite Corey's reluctance, he was forced to accept the crew taking him on as cabin boy.

Although the crew agreed the voyage was going well, Gavin quickly grew bored of doing what he considered chores and being stuck in the confined ship. When the slipspace transition finally ended, however, he was excited to see a whole other planet and eager to explore, but his father ordered him to stay on the ship while they picked up their illicit cargo: military-grade ship armaments to be smuggled to the Insurrection. But again, Gavin disobeyed his father and snuck out of the ship's berth at the spaceport to explore the city, larger than any on Emerald Cove, and naturally lost track of time and himself. While he was gone, a contingent of colonial police led by an Inspector Harding stormed the hangar, having uncovered the smuggling operation.

Lost Boy (2540-2553)
By the time Gavin returned, the crew had been taken into custody and the ship moved to an impound lot, leaving an empty hangar for the boy to find. Frightened that he'd been left behind, Gavin hid and waited anxiously in the hangar for several hours before going back into the streets to search for them. When he finally exhausted himself, the more base instinct of hunger got the better of him, and he started looking for something to eat. Wandering into a farmer's market, he tried to take an apple from a stall and was himself seized by the owner, who angrily yelled for a nearby member of the constabulary. He got free, however, when a girl stamped on the man's foot, making him lose his grip and allowing the pair to flee, losing their pursuers in the city's crowded alleyways.

The girl's name was Roshni Bandha, whom had come to Skopje from India with her parents a year before only to see them die of native bacterial infection which her youth allowed her to develop an immunity to. Having learned to be a pickpocket, she'd had to run away from her orphanage after getting caught one too many times, and had been living in a deserted house ever since. Grateful for her help, Gavin eagerly suggested banding together to help each other survive, to which Roshni agreed. Before long they were working in tandem, one distracting their mark while the other grabbed their wallet or purse, even managing to fool the by a variety of tricks like keeping their targets between them and public cameras.

Their way of living put them into conflict not only with the law, but also another gang of picks sheltered by Patrick Felson, a con man that ran a small tourist shop as a front. After refusing Felson's offer to join them, Roshni and Gavin often got into fights when they ran into members of the crew, and one day encountered a few of them beating up one of their own for almost getting them caught. Despite Roshni's reluctance, Gavin came to his aid and between the three of them drove off the other children. Deciding to take the unfortunate kid with them, he would prove to be the first of several urchins that would join their little family, with Roshni and Gavin as the crew's leaders.

As the group expanded, however, they found petty theft would no longer be enough to feed and clothe them. After working up the nerve, Roshni and a few of their crew broke into the house of a wealthy RCS executive, and stole a few ornamental items and pieces of jewelery. During the break-in, Gavin tripped an alarm and was nearly caught, but the group managed to get away cleanly without being identified. Though he decided the gang would be better off without him coming on future jobs, Gavin discovered a talent for haggling prices, never allowing the owners of the antique and souvenir shops they sold to take advantage of them.

Over time, however, Gavin grew more confident with their crew's repeated successes, and decided to join them when they decided to break into the home of the Inspector who, unbeknownst to Gavin, had arrested his father years earlier. Somehow, however, Harding knew they were coming and took them by surprise when they broke in, capturing Roshni and giving chase to Gavin when the others fled. Unable to shake the policeman so easily, Gavin was chased into the spaceport where he finally managed to lose him by hiding aboard one of the ships. Before he could leave, however, the independent freighter he'd stowed away on lifted off, unintentionally bringing Gavin with it.

Hijacked
Howling Dark =

Personality and Traits

 * Gavin Dunn: "Everybody thinks the only way to survive out here's by being strong. You know how a fool like me has made it this long?"
 * Zoey Hunsinger: "Not really, no."
 * Gavin Dunn: "Trust. The Chancer trusts me to take care of her, and if I've done my job, I know I can trust her."


 * —Gavin's outlook on life on the frontier.

Despite a line of work in which he regularly dealt with criminals, Gavin was exceptionally trusting in the better nature of humans, and other species to an extent. Though he never made much money, he was always generous towards people in need of help, letting "hitchhikers" stay in his ship's spare accommodations or running the occasional odd job free of charge, even if it took him out of his way. His bleeding heart has gotten him into trouble or played several times, but once he understands a person's reasons for doing so and so long as too much harm hasn't been done, Gavin is usually willing to forgive or at least forget.

Gavin has an unusual tendency for a civilian to get involved with Spartans, revolutionaries, crime bosses, and all sorts of other persons of note, and as such can often find himself in over his head. Seeing what they've had to deal with and his own experiences on Mamore, however, have made him a firm disbeliever in the idea that the ends justify the means in a galaxy after the Human-Covenant War, and has sometimes acted as a moral guide or source of perspective for those more important individuals.

Able to keep his freighter well-maintained on his own, Gavin is highly skilled in the mechanical systems of civilian starships, though he prefers to let major repair work be done by a shipyard dock if he can afford it. He also had an arguably good sense in music, fond of old American rock 'n' roll and similar genres popularized by spacers in the Outer Colonies. He owned an acoustic guitar, and often made a bit of extra money by playing ambiance music in bars for tips, and at least knew how to play a pocket harp.