1st Lieutenant Dahlia Acker
Name Dahlia Acker
Position Marine Executive Officer
Rank 1st Lieutenant
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 36 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 178cm | |
| Weight | 65kg | |
| Hair Color | Blonde | |
| Eye Color | Blue | |
| Physical Description | Dahlia is a woman of average height with long blond hair that she wears tied back on duty and free off duty. While leanly muscular, it is more due to the exercise that the Marines put her through than any natural high metabolism. She has strong features and off duty she will happily put on some eyeshadow, try to cover those circles under her eyes that her pale skin makes her predisposed to, but on duty she wears no make-up. She is also partial to jeans, simple tank tops or vests and faux leather jackets off duty. Her boots are always sensible. When on duty she always conforms to the Marine standard and has never been written up on her appearance. She has a faint scar approximately 4 inches running across her right side after an accident during a training exercise, which she has chosen not to have removed. She has no tattoos or piercings. |
Family
| Father | Marine Colonel Edward Acker (retired) | |
| Mother | Doctor Eva Acker (deceased) | |
| Other Family | Uncle: Marine Major Jeremy Acker |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Dahlia in uniform is professional, able to retain information and a natural tactician. She is calm under pressure and a natural trouble solver, something that helped her well as a recon Marine. She also lives up to the ancient saying ‘every Marine is a rifleman’, although she is not a sniper. She listens to those she work with and is happy to offer advice if she is asked for it. She balances her knowledge of the rules and regulations with practical sensibilities and has at times acted like a barrier between the higher ups and those serving with her. Off duty, Dahlia has different interests. She loves reading, especially history books and would consider herself a history buff. She also has an interest in ‘vehicle maintenance’, repairing ancient technology. On Earth, she rents a garage where she has a modified Triumph Scrambler 1200 Steve McQueen Edition motorbike. She rides when she is on Earth, which is not as often as she would like. She is also an animal lover and her holodeck time is usually spent on a horse. She works out a lot, as she has a love for non-replicated food which isn’t as nutritionally balanced as replicated food. She has an interest in martial arts and combat sports, specifically Systema and Muay Thai. Dahlia isn’t naturally a very social person, seeing herself as an introvert. She does however make the effort to get to know people, although she would be the last person you’d see go dancing. It doesn’t mean she has anything against music. Her favourite genre is metal and she happily blasts it in her quarters when she is doing chores. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Dahlia is a good tactician, able to assimilate information quickly and organize plans quickly. She is also able to compartmentalize during missions to ensure she stays focus on the task. She is also her worst critic, analyzing what she has done until all she sees is the negative. It has made her withdrawn in the past. She also sometimes struggles with the line between necessary protecting and over-protectiveness of the enlisted serving with her against senior officers. |
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| Ambitions | Dahlia wants to have her own command at some point and her secret ambition is to outrank her father. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Vehicle maintenance History Heavy Metal Trying out new recipes and cooking (and then eating said food) Martial arts Horseback riding |
| Personal History | The only child of Starfleet Doctor Eva Acker and Marine Colonel Edward Acker, Dahlia was brought up on starships. She was born into a long line of Marines, able to trace military service back to the First World War on Earth. Each generation would have minimum one serviceman. As a child, Dahlia always knew she would end up being a Marine, despite her mother doing her best to sway her over to medicine. Dahlia was attentive but was naturally drawn more towards her father and her uncle ‘Remy’s careers. When Dahlia was ten her mother died when the shuttle she was on was caught in an ion storm. Her father was devastated and became more distant, so Dahlia attached herself more to her uncle who encouraged her to ‘fight out her issues’. This, luckily, didn’t translate to playground fighting but rather martial arts. Dahlia was 14 when the Dominion Wars broke out and with her father and uncle both being active servicemen, she was put into Starfleet Child Care on Earth. It was the single longest time that Dahlia was in one place, living in a group home in Kent, England. She buried her head in books the first year, keeping herself to herself. The groundkeeper, a woman known as Shia, noticed the girl was withdrawing and asked for her help…to rebuild an ancient motorcycle and change it to run on neutral fuel. Dahlia was reluctant at first but after Shia hurt her hand and refused to get it healed, Dahlia was guilted to help. It gave her a love for the way machines worked, the simple way of repairing and maintaining. She also got into riding the bike, finding a certain freedom in just being on the roads. She was 16 when the war ended. Her father was struggling with PTSD after the war and hit the bottle more often than not. He also was given an honourable discharge. For a couple of years, now on Mars, Dahlia felt more like a nurse than a teenager as she urged her father to seek help. He refused and she held her tongue as much as she could…but her 18th birthday approached and she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She broke her father’s trust for his own sake and reported is alcohol abuse to the medical team where she lived. She left for basic training with a dufflebag over her shoulder and the angry shouts of her father still ringing in her ears. Basic training was less of a shock than she had expected, more because her uncle had always been honest about the mental strain training took. She got through it learning new skills and seeing a new steel in herself. After that, it was Officer Candidate School before she found herself applying to and being selected to go to Reconnaissance training. If she thought basic was hard, this was far more grueling. Still she got through it and found herself working with a platoon stationed on Mars. It was the first time in a long while she had been back and she found her father sober and recovering. For the next few years, Dahlia learned what it meant to be an officer and also enhanced her own skills. She learned the difference between a good officer and a bad officer was believing you were infallible and not listening. She learned that the enlisted often had more experience and a Sergeant could give a good read on any situation. She learned communication and cooperation meant a plan was understood and pulled off. But she also learned that the plan always has a weak spot you never anticipated. While mostly they did training exercises, there were occasion when real missions happened. After the Dominion Wars there was instability on many colonies. It was rare that the recon Marines were sent out, but it did happen. Combat tested as much as supposedly peacetime allowed, Dahlia reached a point where her career progression was non-existent. She was not being promoted, she had experience but not the rank to progress within the hierarchy of the recon unit. She requested a transfer to a normal Marine unit, hoping to get more experience being permanently stationed on ships rather than using Starfleet vessels as a glorified taxi service. Her request was granted and she was first transferred to the USS Yorktown, where she served for a few years. In the end, she requested a transfer due to numerous issues with her Marine Commanding Officer. While neither could be at fault, there was a personality clash between the reckless and harsh Commanding Officer and the more analytic Marine Executive Officer. When a training mission went wrong and two Marines sustained injuries, Dahlia recognized that the lack of understanding at command had put the Marines at risk. In the hopes that unit cohesion would be restored, she packed her bags and took a new posting…on the USS Ontario. |