Luciano, Nicholas "Nickels"

Lieutenant j.g. Nicholas "Nickels" Luciano, an Iotian, is currently a security officer aboard the USS Discovery-C.

Stats

• Full Name: Nicholas Antonio Drako Alfonse Luciano
• Made Name: "Nickels", so named because of a demonstrated dexterity with manual coin tricks (flips, knuckle-rolls, tosses) and sleight-of-hand, as well as a propensity for grifting small change from his loved ones. Iotians raised as followers of the Book prefer to be called by their made name by everyone except their parents and, rarely, very close friends or lovers; even in official capacities, Bookies (as they're called, somewhat irreverently) insist on being referred to as "The Hellcat", "Rocky", or "Krakox the Knife".
• Race: Iotian
• Date of Birth: 236210.31
• Place of Birth: Okmyx Chicago Living Museum, Sigma Iotia II
• Age: 24
• Gender: Male
• Telepathic status: Negligible, although some telepaths have reported experiencing a disorienting form of echolalia when reading the Iotian mind.

Appearance

• Height: 1.78 meters
• Weight: 79 kilograms
• Hair Color: Dark brown
• Length of Hair: Trimmed over the ears and above the collar, perpetually slicked back.
• Eye Color: Dark indigo
• Skin Tone: Lightly olive
• Birthmarks, Scars: He's kept his face pretty and his fast hands intact, but under his tunic he shows the scars of growing up in a gangster slum. A knife scar runs down the underside of his left arm, from the crown of the scapula to just above his left elbow; a pebbled scar on his right hip, a testament to being thrown from a speeding car; and the back of his right calf is puckered with a scorch scar, from where he was grazed with a blast from a phaser (or "heater") as he scrammed.
• Build: Wiry. Under 6 feet tall, Nickels is built on slender lines, but strong and with notably broad shoulders.
• Eyes: Set wide and slightly tilted, appearing almost black except under blacklight; strong UV lighting makes the irises glow bright violet.
• Carriage: Saunters like nobody's business, strolls at high speed. Has been observed bopping and skedaddling.
• Poses: Anyone who's studied 20th-century Terran mass media and been exposed to the cartoons of Tex Avery and Fritz Freleng or the films of Edward G. Robinson, or Jack Nicholson's appearance as Jack Napier in Tim Burton's Batman will quickly recognize Nickels' mannerisms, from the way he slouches against walls when at ease with one foot up pressed to the wall behind him and one hand in his pocket, to the angled lean of his shoulders. While a loyal, proud and forthright officer of Starfleet, his body language is that of a wolfish thug from the heyday of Earth's 1920s.
• Taste in Clothing (when off duty): Pinstripes - dark suits with white piping, crisp snap-brim fedoras, and French-cuffed shirts with cufflinks. He dresses exceedingly well - some might say over the top, but the big name gangsters of the '20s were not notable for their lack of style. At the Academy, he grew his own Iotian iarmyk flowers, bright sunbursts of pink and orange, to wear in his lapels.
• Shoes: Heavy-soled black leather oxfords with white spats, polished to a luster.
• Voice: Smooth and heavily Iotian-accented Terran laced with intranslatable Terran anachronisms that baffle species unfamiliar with Earth's 20th-century history.
• Handedness: Fully ambidextrous.

Manner

• Quarters: Nickels really makes himself at home, even it involves some bribery to get a few illicit items aboard and some finagling and forgery to make sure he has a larger suite than his rank might otherwise entitle him to. Decorations include his elaborate gun kit for stripping and cleaning and loading the heirloom chrome .45s mounted on the wall, his framed picture of his sainted mother Mary Catherine Alouette "The Hellcat" Hellene-Luciano, and his own small copy of the Book on its own shelf with the appropriate icons and apocrypha. He has a small but flourishing zitkis berry bush, a flowerbox for his iarmyk lapel flowers, and assorted bric-a-brac that he is either smuggling somewhere or considering using as gifts. He has a large armchair upholstered in the rich leather of an Alvanian giant sloth, a forcefield sound system for listening to his operas, and assorted stands, perches, and technical equipment for his beloved pet Iotian clee, Alibi, who acts as Nickels' confidante, henchman and secretary bird.
• Mannerisms:
  • The Nickel: Like many of Earth's gangsters of the lost and misty past, Nickels is extremely superstitious and talismanic, and this is expressed through a mannerism that becomes immediately obvious upon meeting him. He is almost at all times toying with an Iotian nickel; this is a denomination of coin that came into circulation about 5 years after the USS Horizon departed the planet in 2168. The nickel is 30.6 millimeters in diameter and weighs 12.5 grams, with heavy smooth edges, and die-cast faces. Nicky Luciano's lucky piece is a 2268 nickel, featuring the profile of Boss Bela Okmyx on the head, and on the tail an image of a large boviform ungulate once referred to as a kyko in the Iotian tongue, but now more commonly called an Iotian buffalo. He flips the coin nearly constantly, making soft pinging sounds, and can roll it back and forth across his knuckles, spin it between his fingertips, and seemingly make it appear and disappear from hand to hand. It can be very distracting for people with him, but it helps him focus and center. He has also exhibited some minor skill with hypnotic induction using the twirling, twinkling coin rolling across the backs of his knuckles or spinning slowly between his fingertips as a focus.
  • His speech is ladled with thick 1920s Terran vernacular and Iotian slang, a habit he can't seem to drop, although he does take care to follow proper protocols with regards to respect and rank as much as he can. His primary issues in that regard have been the occasional officer dressing him down for his drawling syllables and colorful metaphors, and once or twice being accosted by female officers whom he unwittingly referred to as "doll", "peaches", or "oh, you kid".
• Temperment: Even. Nickels was raised in a very challenging environment, and only the most adaptable survived. He is unique even among his Museum-bred brethren for escaping the old city and making it to Starfleet by hook and by crook, and has learned to adapt and watch and wait. He is exceedingly patient, good-humored (if a bit chatty), and his anger is ground exceedingly fine. He has demonstrated a propensity for responding to physical confrontation with immediate and merciless violence - a street-bred survival response from being a made kid during the gang wars. He has been working on that violent response instinct with the help of Starfleet Academy counselors, and hopes to continue the counseling aboard the Independence-A.
• Habits: Nickels is a man of superstition, ritual, and tradition. He does his readings from the Book. He religiously goes target shooting with his antiquated matched .45s, modern type 2 and 3 phasers, and his dear old Iotian-built 2270-edition vintage type 2. He writes his mother. He polishes his spats. He always meant to learn to cook, but his mother was so good at it that he never had the chance, and so now he just relies on the replicator codes she subspaces to him every week to keep him fed in the style to which he is accustomed.

Personality

On the Jung Typology Test, Nicholas Luciano rated as ESFJ, an Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judge. This personality type is often described as a "Provider", and is put as follows by the Keirsey Institute:

Friendly, outgoing, neighborly - in a word, Providers are gregarious, so much so that they can become restless when isolated from people. They love to talk with others, and will often strike up a conversation with strangers and chat pleasantly about any topic that comes to mind. Friendships matter a great deal to Providers, and their conversations with friends often touch on good times from years past. Family traditions are also sacred to them, and they carefully observe birthdays and anniversaries. In addition, Providers show a delightful fascination with news of their friends and neighbors. If we wish to know what's been going on in the local community, school, or church, they're happy to fill us in on all the details.

Nickels will chatter quite a bit, filling the uncomfortably quiet spaces in a conversation - or before a conversation - with colorful metaphors and unique Iotian similes and old Terran slang. Family is literally sacred to him - an Iotian, even a low-down backstabbing Jojo of a no-goodnik, would throw himself on his own switchblade before he wronged his mother or betrayed his brother. Friendships are closely-held and treasured, and frequently tested for the limits of a friend's patience. While authority is always reverently recognized, it is also frequently challenged.

Hobbies and Pastimes

• Non-Lethal Weapons Development - Sometimes, a phaser just isn't enough, or it's too much. During his deployment on the USS Independence-A, Nickels undertook a project to develop non-lethal weaponry as alternatives to phasers that could be deployed against a group of pirates that had stolen a Starfleet vessel, the USS Phoenix. He was proud of the designs he created and deployed, and was all the more shocked when none were used. The incursion into the Phoenix was a bloodbath, with the Independence's Marines and command staff using lethal force at every opportunity. Since then, Nickels has become something of an obsessive materials engineer, a mad genius in his own way. He is constantly utilizing modern technology in new ways to develop ways to stun, baffle, batter, dazzle, befuddle, heckle and incapacitate. Among some of his more innovative ideas are a stun grenade called the Beatdown Ball, a specialized gel round for the TR-116 that deploys a shock heavy enough to discomfit a Nausicaan, an ocarina-sized sonic weapon called the Missile Whistle that creates a compressed audio wave that strikes with physical force, and the Tesserbat, a construction of folded rodinium plates and a tektite core that uses kinetic energy to assemble itself into a regulation-length baseball bat when one swings the handle.
• Magic - Once upon a time, a student at San Francisco's Starfleet Academy saw Nickels Luciano crossing the quad, casually making his nickel appear and disappear from his closed fist, and asked if he was a magician. Nicky had no idea what the student was talking about, but looked it up, and shortly he began studying legerdemain and sleight-of-hand, and registered with the Galactic Brotherhood of Magicians as a close-up magician just before graduating from the Academy. Although he primarily focused on coin tricks, he is also adept with making other small objects appear and disappear and many forms of card magic.
• Pistoleering - Nickels is a crack shot with his antiquated .45 automatics, and enjoys target shooting and shooting skeet with them, although he has to be careful about using projectile weapons on a starship. He's become increasingly satisfied with simulated pistol shooting, though, and is a patient - if wisecracking - teacher for anyone who wishes to learn the old art.
• Fizzbin - Widely regarded as the most unnecessarily complicated game in the galaxy, fizzbin was invented on the spur of the moment by Captain James T. Kirk during his incarceration by Boss Bela Okmyx in 2268 to distract his guards. In true Iotian fashion, the rules were perfectly recalled, endlessly discussed, and finally refined into a game that has made it all across the galaxy. He is happy to discuss the rules of the game in long, intense detail with anyone at all providing they're buying the drinks and the minimum ante for the game is set before the discussion of the rules begins. Nickels played fizzbin heavily even for an Iotian of an old family, and is mildly infamous in Okmyx Chicago for having been dealt a royal fizzbin (two jacks, two queens, two kings, and a seventh card of a suit different than all the pairs, only obtainable by sitting on the dealer's right). The odds of drawing that hand, it has been noted by scientific luminaries, are astronomical.
• Smuggling - This is something of a secret - and Nickels and Alibi certainly work to keep it that way - but Nickels has been unable to resist the allure of taking a piece of the action made available serving as a Security officer between the far-flung planets and star bases a Starfleet vessel travels between. He uses his quarters to stash an astonishing variety of contraband. He never takes anything dangerously illegal - he strictly keeps his hands clean of ketracel white and similar drugs, and he only moves archaic or ceremonial weapons. Nonetheless, he has turned a tidy profit, and maintains a network of contacts in the seamy undersides of star bases all across the Avalon sector.

Likes and Dislikes

• Likes
  • Fizzbin, poker, and games of chance.
  • The elegant weaponry of a more civilized time
  • Pasta fagioli, clams linguine, kyko steaks and Iotian marinara made with real zitkis berries
  • Opera
  • Fast cars
  • Fast women
  • Snappy threads
  • Snappy patter
  • The action, and pieces thereof

• Dislikes
  • Jackboots
  • Squareheads
  • No-goodniks
  • Frosty dames
  • Boring parties

Ambitions and Goals

Nickels has one simple aspiration: to make his family proud. Bound up in that is a complex Gordian knot of ideas, emotions, plans and scams. He wants to rise in Starfleet to make his mother proud and show that she was right to sacrifice so much to free her baby boy from the confines of the Living Museum. He wants to find ways to make his Starfleet gig as profitable as possible because if you're not breaking the law then you're not really having fun, as his father taught him. He wants to make himself as capable and feared a fighter as he can, to protect those he loves so no one he cares about dies like his brother Rocky. He wants to find a place for himself in the galaxy - he's a man out of time, a throwback to a distant era that even his own people see as a joke.

Family

• Parents
  • Father: Joseph Nicholas Carlos Stefano "Joe Bananas" Luciano - Joe Bananas is a hard man. He's a 7th generation Bookie; his family changed their hereditary name, Zabo to honor Charles "Lucky" Luciano, one of the luminaries from the Book. Joe Luciano follows all the old ways; he is a robber, a protection man, a blackmailer, a leg breaker, and a racketeer. He smuggles, he exports, and he raises hell. He passed his steely old ways on to his children, raising them to be as hard and brutal as he was. When they showed skill, he used them as tools and weapons in his quest to become the most dangerous man in the Living Museum. This is a rather strange goal on the face of it - it's like becoming the most dangerous costumed mouse in the theme park, but the Okymyx Chicago Living Museum is like no other theme park. It is not the Happiest Place on Sigma Iotia. It is not a Magic Kingdom. It is a place where tourists come to see the past come to life and the past dies in alleys, living lives that are nasty, brutish and short. Joe Bananas exemplifies this. He was furious when he found that his wife and eldest daughter had smuggled Nickels off the planet and off to a fancy boarding school to get him ready for life in the Academy - Nickels had been a great money-maker for him, a clever thief and a ruthless street fighter. After years of seething, he finally struck on a plan to get Nickels back to Sigma Iotia. It was a plan that cost Nickels his position in Starfleet and cost his oldest brother his life. Nickels has sworn never to go back to Sigma Iotia again - but Joe Bananas knows that if he got him once, he can get him again.
  • Mother: Mary Catherine Alouette "The Hellcat" Hellene
• Siblings:
  • William Adiamo Charles Truffalo "Truffles" Luciano
  • Timoteo Bela Erasmus Mariano "Timmy the Wrench" Luciano
  • Peter Thomas Tarantello Nelson "Rocky" Luciano
  • Serafina Cindel Quintella Maria "Sarah Fives" Luciano
  • Tara Bridget Katerina Doncella "The Nail" Luciano

Personal History

Awards & Commendations

• The Order of StarFleet Merit and Achievement 1: 238701.27
• B-Plot Award: 238701.27