Established Status: Yes. Rhys has been in the Quad for 4 years doing the Rich Relative thing and generally being a sub-par human being.
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: End of Episode 5: The Vault of the Traveller (After entering the Vault)
Citizenship: Qreshi
Job: High-level, zero-importance Trophy Position at The Company. Aka Senior Vice-President of Westerlyn Resource Acquisition & Management Inquiries.
Abilities: Great-looking hair.
...Which is a nice way of saying Rhys is about as supernaturally gifted as a rock. He does have some everyday skills which stand out however, first and foremost being hacking and data mining! Rhys predominantly uses his ECHO eye and cybernetic arm systems to do this and is actually pretty competent at it? Not Handsome Jack-levels of awesome mind you, but he does a fairly good job for someone with like, twenty years less experience than a programming CEO of a trillion bajillion dollar corporation.
He does have some pretty sweet tech in his cybernetics though!
Cybernetic arm: It comes with a holographic display, a light, slightly increased strength (nothing dramatic), and the ability to run hacking programs. It's basically a HUD.
ECHOEye Implant: This allows Rjhys to see in the dark as well as scan any object he trains his eye on...provided there's information on it in his database/The Company's database. And provided he has the clearance for it.
EchoPort A small port located on Rhys's temple which allows him to upload data directly to his brain--or download from it onto a computer (this is how Jack moves from the ID drive, to Rhys's brain, to Helios, and then back into his brain in canon).
Personality:
Rhys is not a Good Person, but then again he also comes from a canon of People who aren't, ranging from the megalomaniacal to the outright insane, "meat buddies riding the death train for life" sort. In fact the only actual "good" people where Rhys comes from aren't humans but robots with AIs, so that should really say something. Borderlands is not a series about Good Guys doing Good Things but in fact one of "People are Doing Things to Kill For Money or Power Pretty Much Most of the Time," and Rhys is no different in that regard. Actually he pretty much just fits right in.
In canon Rhys works for the Hyperion corporation which he admits makes him the "bad guy" in his story. Hyperion is responsible for a long list of atrocities, the least of which is Ruining The Lives Of Everyone on Pandora. They bled the planet dry for rare alien minerals, destroyed entire settlements for profit and gain, and under Handsome Jack's rule went around murdering and killing anyone who got into their way. There isn't a single person on Pandora who's fond of them, and for good reason. While Rhys himself may not have personally taken part in any of these atrocities, he has done things like brokering shady Eridium mine deals for his own gain and even went so far as to orchestrate a little corporate revenge on a company rival named Vasquez following a stolen promotion which resulted in "three years of wasted effort" when his former boss was vented into space. That was pretty much to the extent that Rhys was broken up about that before he decided he was going to screw Vasquez over by stealing his deal. Which? Not actually all that uncommon or unusual in Hyperion. Everyone gets somewhere by screwing someone else over, and the best way to get ahead? Be just as cold and scheming as everyone else around you. It's sink or swim in the world Rhys works.
So yeah Rhys isn't exactly a great person. He's willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead barring outright murder for a position, openly disdainful of Pandora and the people who live there, and at times just a little bit two-faced. Rhys did spend three years sucking up to Henderson in hopes of a promotion after all. It's all part of the Hyperion ExperienceTM, and as much as Rhys hates it he's always wanted to run his own company (he made a club with his friends as a kid so he could print business cards. It's as nerdy as it sounds).
Rhys dreams of getting ahead: he wants to rule the Hyperion corporation and have all the perks that go along with it. Greed and a want for the money and power that come with that sort of status drive Rhys in the beginning of the game. He wants the respect it'll grant him even if his best friend Vaughn reminds him that "the only ones who talk like that are poor people no one likes". Rhys has Ambition and wants to be just like his hero: Handsome Jack.
...Who is admittedly not that greatest role model out there considering he murdered and blackmailed his way to the top and then committed a number of atrocities including robot genocide and mass-murder, but. You know. He was also super-charismatic and funny about it which made it kind...of...?? Okay? Or something. He was mostly just killing bandits and awful Pandoran stuff so it's almost sorta justified to Rhys in the beginning. That particular mindset changes a lot after he meets the man for himself (read: uploads an AI of him into his brain and almost gets murdered by him). It's pretty disillusioning when your hero tries to kill you by shoving a metal skeleton inside your body for his robot army.
Luckily there's more to Rhys then just being Hyperion. He wants to reach the top sure, but he wants to bring his friends Vaughn and Yvette with him. The plan is for all three of them to take over and rule Hyperion; they work together to get Rhys into a position where he can move up, and then he in turn would promote them up with him. He may be a bit of an asshole but Rhys is actually incredibly loyal to his friends and tends to put a lot of his faith and trust in them. Even Vasquez offering him back his old job and splitting ten million dollars wasn't enough to even make Rhys consider blaming the whole thing on Vaughn and letting him take the fall. He tells Vasquez to go stuff it, because betrayal of the friend variety? Not Rhys's cup of tea.
In fact Rhys actually likes...having them. And being liked. Even if he's quick to dismiss Fiona and Sasha as being Pandoran and therefor a bit beneath him, he actually takes the chance to open up to Sasha about how Helios isn't all it's cracked up to be, even tries to relate to her a little bit. Which may or may not have to do with a slight crush on her but the point is that yeah, Rhys kinda sucks. But he's not a totally despicable person and once he starts to like someone and warm up to them (which honestly does not take much, this guy is starved for kindness jfc) he's actually...a pretty decent friend. Loader Bot helps him and Vaughn and Rhys grows attached. Dumpy helps him fight off August and his goons and Rhys grows attached. Fiona calls him a friend and Rhys looks surprised and touched as all hell. So I guess it's more accurate to say that he's vain jerk with more of a gooey center to him than you'd expect. But that's also because he's a giant nerd no matter how he tries to portray himself as the Cool Company Man.
Yes, a nerd. And a fanboy! He idolized Handsome Jack and kept posters of him in his room. He keeps a collection of ridiculously-colored socks. The very first words he manages to utter to Zer0 after witnessing him kill a Skag? Telling him how cool he is, and at the mention that Zer0 might fight the Vault monster alongside him and Gortys, Rhys is mostly concerned about getting to sit next to him. And getting told he did well?? "Ohhh my god, thank you"--yeah. This loser gets it bad.
I mean sure Rhys is good at his job. But he also initially has no idea how his stun baton works (but he remarks that it looks neat), no idea how to work Loader Bot initially, shoves a random ID drive into his head and electrocutes himself, and often forgets that he even has a robot arm capable of doing stuff way better than his human one. Case an point: anytime it comes to punching someone or trying to strangle that one bandit who thought it was a joke at first. Rhys is Not Strong. And he comically messes up! A lot! Like a loooot, actually. Rhys can look he part of a aspiring businessman but in practice he's more like a dorky businessman whose idea of intimidating his rival is "I could be creeping up, behind you and" while stuttering and fumbling over what he's trying to say.
So yeah. Rhys is a little ways off from being the awesomely capable figure he sees himself as, but he never hurts for confidence! Even when he really shouldn't have any or it's kind of unfounded. Of all things Rhys still somehow manages that. Or well, he manages it whenever he doesn't manage to be awkward which is about a fifty-fifty split. He talks a good talk about how smoothly things will go with the Vault Key deal with Vaughn and then totally trips over himself trying to tell Sasha she's pretty. What it works out to be is Rhys presenting himself as totally capable without actually being prepared for the reality (see: all of Pandora). On Helios Rhys is actually perfectly capable! He knows his environment and doesn't even flinch when he gets cornered by accountants bearing finger guns. Put him on Pandora trying to ask for directions? And he winds up in a firefight with an entire town of bandits.
The best way to look at Rhys is someone who isn't Great, but who isn't Awful either. He has plenty of vices: he wants power and money, he's materialistic, wants recognition and he's vain! The first thing Rhys does after getting Jack out of his head and thinking himself betrayed by Fiona and Sasha is to get himself a haircut and a new suit. He also kind of took the rights to Atlas and named himself CEO and starts making people President of Stuff and all that but there you go. He doesn't seek his friends out because he assumed they betrayed him--but when he thinks he's contacted by them? Rhys heads over right away, by himself, unarmed and unguarded, ready to work things out. And then gets kidnapped and stuff but yes.
Rhys is sarcastic and egotistical, overly confident at times and more than a little bit of a pain, but he's also someone capable of expressing remorse for past deeds (apologizing to Vaughn for their junior years), learning from his mistakes (trusting and idolizing Jack), and being genuinely sincere when he cares about someone. Once Rhys cares about someone he tends to care A Lot: he chases down a car and fights off bandits to get to Vaughn, he refuses to let Sasha fall when they're stuck hanging, tells Loader Bot to save himself when attacked, and comes to view Fiona as an equal partner/friend despite his bias against Pandorans and being conned by her. Rhys can forgive people and move on from his misgivings with people, which is something that sets him apart from a lot of people at Hyperion.
By the time Rhys enters the Vault with Fiona at the end of the game he's grown from someone whose drives and goals revolves entirely around advancing himself and his close friends, to an individual who wants to work to make something better of himself and Atlas, who cares deeply about the tight-knit group of close friends he made during his time on Pandora, and who knows exactly the kind of person he doesn't want to be: the sort Hyperion turned out under the rule of Handsome Jack, and exactly the person he had been shaping up to be before the Vault. Rhys wants to be better both for himself and to make up for his past mistakes. When he rebuilds Atlas it isn't going to be like Hyperion was: he's determine it not be.
RHYS | BORDERLANDS | reserved
Player
Name: Dolly
Age: 27
Contact:
Preferred Pronouns: She/her
Character
Name: Rhys
Age: 28
Memory Option: 1, deteriorating.
Established Status: Yes. Rhys has been in the Quad for 4 years doing the Rich Relative thing and generally being a sub-par human being.
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: End of Episode 5: The Vault of the Traveller (After entering the Vault)
Citizenship: Qreshi
Job: High-level, zero-importance Trophy Position at The Company. Aka Senior Vice-President of Westerlyn Resource Acquisition & Management Inquiries.
Abilities: Great-looking hair.
...Which is a nice way of saying Rhys is about as supernaturally gifted as a rock. He does have some everyday skills which stand out however, first and foremost being hacking and data mining! Rhys predominantly uses his ECHO eye and cybernetic arm systems to do this and is actually pretty competent at it? Not Handsome Jack-levels of awesome mind you, but he does a fairly good job for someone with like, twenty years less experience than a programming CEO of a trillion bajillion dollar corporation.
He does have some pretty sweet tech in his cybernetics though!
Cybernetic arm: It comes with a holographic display, a light, slightly increased strength (nothing dramatic), and the ability to run hacking programs. It's basically a HUD.
ECHOEye Implant: This allows Rjhys to see in the dark as well as scan any object he trains his eye on...provided there's information on it in his database/The Company's database. And provided he has the clearance for it.
EchoPort A small port located on Rhys's temple which allows him to upload data directly to his brain--or download from it onto a computer (this is how Jack moves from the ID drive, to Rhys's brain, to Helios, and then back into his brain in canon).
Personality:
Rhys is not a Good Person, but then again he also comes from a canon of People who aren't, ranging from the megalomaniacal to the outright insane, "meat buddies riding the death train for life" sort. In fact the only actual "good" people where Rhys comes from aren't humans but robots with AIs, so that should really say something. Borderlands is not a series about Good Guys doing Good Things but in fact one of "People are Doing Things to Kill For Money or Power Pretty Much Most of the Time," and Rhys is no different in that regard. Actually he pretty much just fits right in.
In canon Rhys works for the Hyperion corporation which he admits makes him the "bad guy" in his story. Hyperion is responsible for a long list of atrocities, the least of which is Ruining The Lives Of Everyone on Pandora. They bled the planet dry for rare alien minerals, destroyed entire settlements for profit and gain, and under Handsome Jack's rule went around murdering and killing anyone who got into their way. There isn't a single person on Pandora who's fond of them, and for good reason. While Rhys himself may not have personally taken part in any of these atrocities, he has done things like brokering shady Eridium mine deals for his own gain and even went so far as to orchestrate a little corporate revenge on a company rival named Vasquez following a stolen promotion which resulted in "three years of wasted effort" when his former boss was vented into space. That was pretty much to the extent that Rhys was broken up about that before he decided he was going to screw Vasquez over by stealing his deal. Which? Not actually all that uncommon or unusual in Hyperion. Everyone gets somewhere by screwing someone else over, and the best way to get ahead? Be just as cold and scheming as everyone else around you. It's sink or swim in the world Rhys works.
So yeah Rhys isn't exactly a great person. He's willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead barring outright murder for a position, openly disdainful of Pandora and the people who live there, and at times just a little bit two-faced. Rhys did spend three years sucking up to Henderson in hopes of a promotion after all. It's all part of the Hyperion ExperienceTM, and as much as Rhys hates it he's always wanted to run his own company (he made a club with his friends as a kid so he could print business cards. It's as nerdy as it sounds).
Rhys dreams of getting ahead: he wants to rule the Hyperion corporation and have all the perks that go along with it. Greed and a want for the money and power that come with that sort of status drive Rhys in the beginning of the game. He wants the respect it'll grant him even if his best friend Vaughn reminds him that "the only ones who talk like that are poor people no one likes". Rhys has Ambition and wants to be just like his hero: Handsome Jack.
...Who is admittedly not that greatest role model out there considering he murdered and blackmailed his way to the top and then committed a number of atrocities including robot genocide and mass-murder, but. You know. He was also super-charismatic and funny about it which made it kind...of...?? Okay? Or something. He was mostly just killing bandits and awful Pandoran stuff so it's almost sorta justified to Rhys in the beginning. That particular mindset changes a lot after he meets the man for himself (read: uploads an AI of him into his brain and almost gets murdered by him). It's pretty disillusioning when your hero tries to kill you by shoving a metal skeleton inside your body for his robot army.
Luckily there's more to Rhys then just being Hyperion. He wants to reach the top sure, but he wants to bring his friends Vaughn and Yvette with him. The plan is for all three of them to take over and rule Hyperion; they work together to get Rhys into a position where he can move up, and then he in turn would promote them up with him. He may be a bit of an asshole but Rhys is actually incredibly loyal to his friends and tends to put a lot of his faith and trust in them. Even Vasquez offering him back his old job and splitting ten million dollars wasn't enough to even make Rhys consider blaming the whole thing on Vaughn and letting him take the fall. He tells Vasquez to go stuff it, because betrayal of the friend variety? Not Rhys's cup of tea.
In fact Rhys actually likes...having them. And being liked. Even if he's quick to dismiss Fiona and Sasha as being Pandoran and therefor a bit beneath him, he actually takes the chance to open up to Sasha about how Helios isn't all it's cracked up to be, even tries to relate to her a little bit. Which may or may not have to do with a slight crush on her but the point is that yeah, Rhys kinda sucks. But he's not a totally despicable person and once he starts to like someone and warm up to them (which honestly does not take much, this guy is starved for kindness jfc) he's actually...a pretty decent friend. Loader Bot helps him and Vaughn and Rhys grows attached. Dumpy helps him fight off August and his goons and Rhys grows attached. Fiona calls him a friend and Rhys looks surprised and touched as all hell. So I guess it's more accurate to say that he's vain jerk with more of a gooey center to him than you'd expect. But that's also because he's a giant nerd no matter how he tries to portray himself as the Cool Company Man.
Yes, a nerd. And a fanboy! He idolized Handsome Jack and kept posters of him in his room. He keeps a collection of ridiculously-colored socks. The very first words he manages to utter to Zer0 after witnessing him kill a Skag? Telling him how cool he is, and at the mention that Zer0 might fight the Vault monster alongside him and Gortys, Rhys is mostly concerned about getting to sit next to him. And getting told he did well?? "Ohhh my god, thank you"--yeah. This loser gets it bad.
I mean sure Rhys is good at his job. But he also initially has no idea how his stun baton works (but he remarks that it looks neat), no idea how to work Loader Bot initially, shoves a random ID drive into his head and electrocutes himself, and often forgets that he even has a robot arm capable of doing stuff way better than his human one. Case an point: anytime it comes to punching someone or trying to strangle that one bandit who thought it was a joke at first. Rhys is Not Strong. And he comically messes up! A lot! Like a loooot, actually. Rhys can look he part of a aspiring businessman but in practice he's more like a dorky businessman whose idea of intimidating his rival is "I could be creeping up, behind you and" while stuttering and fumbling over what he's trying to say.
So yeah. Rhys is a little ways off from being the awesomely capable figure he sees himself as, but he never hurts for confidence! Even when he really shouldn't have any or it's kind of unfounded. Of all things Rhys still somehow manages that. Or well, he manages it whenever he doesn't manage to be awkward which is about a fifty-fifty split. He talks a good talk about how smoothly things will go with the Vault Key deal with Vaughn and then totally trips over himself trying to tell Sasha she's pretty. What it works out to be is Rhys presenting himself as totally capable without actually being prepared for the reality (see: all of Pandora). On Helios Rhys is actually perfectly capable! He knows his environment and doesn't even flinch when he gets cornered by accountants bearing finger guns. Put him on Pandora trying to ask for directions? And he winds up in a firefight with an entire town of bandits.
The best way to look at Rhys is someone who isn't Great, but who isn't Awful either. He has plenty of vices: he wants power and money, he's materialistic, wants recognition and he's vain! The first thing Rhys does after getting Jack out of his head and thinking himself betrayed by Fiona and Sasha is to get himself a haircut and a new suit. He also kind of took the rights to Atlas and named himself CEO and starts making people President of Stuff and all that but there you go. He doesn't seek his friends out because he assumed they betrayed him--but when he thinks he's contacted by them? Rhys heads over right away, by himself, unarmed and unguarded, ready to work things out. And then gets kidnapped and stuff but yes.
Rhys is sarcastic and egotistical, overly confident at times and more than a little bit of a pain, but he's also someone capable of expressing remorse for past deeds (apologizing to Vaughn for their junior years), learning from his mistakes (trusting and idolizing Jack), and being genuinely sincere when he cares about someone. Once Rhys cares about someone he tends to care A Lot: he chases down a car and fights off bandits to get to Vaughn, he refuses to let Sasha fall when they're stuck hanging, tells Loader Bot to save himself when attacked, and comes to view Fiona as an equal partner/friend despite his bias against Pandorans and being conned by her. Rhys can forgive people and move on from his misgivings with people, which is something that sets him apart from a lot of people at Hyperion.
By the time Rhys enters the Vault with Fiona at the end of the game he's grown from someone whose drives and goals revolves entirely around advancing himself and his close friends, to an individual who wants to work to make something better of himself and Atlas, who cares deeply about the tight-knit group of close friends he made during his time on Pandora, and who knows exactly the kind of person he doesn't want to be: the sort Hyperion turned out under the rule of Handsome Jack, and exactly the person he had been shaping up to be before the Vault. Rhys wants to be better both for himself and to make up for his past mistakes. When he rebuilds Atlas it isn't going to be like Hyperion was: he's determine it not be.