User:InfernalWarrior/Archive:Johun Shepard

"You're not even alive... not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken."

- Johun Shepard

Johun Shepard was a male human soldier for the Systems Alliance, and later for the Citadel Council. The only member of his family to survive a brutal raid by batarian slavers, he was rescued by the Systems Alliance Military. As an adult, he joined the military himself, reaching the rank of N7. After leading the defense of Elysium, and serving on the SSV Normandy under Capt. David Anderson, he became the first human to join the Spectres, the elite special task force of the Citadel Council.

Life on Mindoir
"Hey kid! We're Alliance Navy, kid, we're here to help. Come on out now, it's safe."

- Nick Salvatore to Johun Shepard after he and his squad rescued Shepard from batarian slavers

Johun Shepard was born on the outskirts of the capital city of Mindoir on April 11, 2154 CE to a farmer and his wife, Jeb Shepard and Jalissa Shepard. Growing up in a poor family, Shepard learned how to be humble and how to do without everything he needed. As his parents had little in the way of money to put towards his education at a private school, Shepard was forced to attend the mediocre public school system on Mindoir, where he was constantly bullied by the other students because he was intelligent. In order to prevent him from being bullied ever again, Shepard began a rigorous training and exercise regimen. However, his efforts failed and he was continually bullied until he eventually began to fight back.



Several days after his sixteenth birthday, Shepard returned home early after having been in a particularly grueling fight at school and began to work on his family's groundcar, which had broken down recently. Through his constant fixing of his parents' groundcar, Shepard had learned the skills needed by a mechanic, which would prove useful later on in his distinguished and colorful military career. While he and his father were driving into the city to get supplies for their homestead on the outskirts of town, batarian slavers began to land on Mindoir's surface, attacking the planet's cities and making off with its human inhabitants. Shepard's father, Jeb, attempted to resist the batarians, attempting to buy Johun time to warn their family and escape.

Hiding in some nearby bushes, Johun managed to escape the notice of the batarians after they had killed his father. After retrieving his father's shotgun from his lifeless hands, Johun attempted to return to his family's homestead, only to find it a smoking ruin with his family's bodies inside. However, batarians, escaping from a Systems Alliance task force which had come to the aid of the planet, noticed him and attempted to capture him, chasing him into the nearby forest, where he was rescued by soldiers under the command of Nick Salvatore.

Driven partially insane by watching his family and friends die at the hands of the batarians, Johun was placed in a makeshift orphanage in the ruins of the capital city along with the other three survivors of the attack. Under the careful watch of his doctors and Nick Salvatore, Shepard recovered from his near-death experience and renewed his studies. However, due to the death of his family at their hands, Shepard developed an immense, and undying hatred for the batarian race.

Alliance Custody
"So, what do you think?"

- A Marine Corps recruiter to Shepard during an interview about joining the Systems Alliance Military

After several months of searching the ruins of the cities of Mindoir, the Alliance decided to pull out, leaving the smoking ruins of the colony behind. Shepard and the other three orphaned survivors were taken into Alliance custody and moved to Gagarin Station, a remote space station used for research, where they were studied for any adverse effects from their experiences and slowly nursed back to full health. Their stay aboard the station was only supposed to last until their next of kin could be located, whether on Earth or one of the colonies. However, in the cold sterile confines of the station, the survivors started to lose their minds. A boy named Toole was the first to succumb, slitting his throat in his dormitory one night. Determined to stay sane, Shepard began looking for ways to escape the station.

After Toole's suicide, psychiatrists and other doctors constantly monitored Shepard to make certain that he was healthy and was not considering suicide. At this time, he had finally found his way off the station: the Alliance Military. Due to his records being lost in the fires that broke out during the batarian attack, Shepard was able to lie about his birth date and current age, and get appointments with various Alliance military recruiters, who often visited the station on their way back to Earth or Arcturus Station from the colonies.

After several interviews with recruiters from the various branches, Shepard finally found the branch that he was most interested in: the Alliance Marine Corps. When a recruiter came by the station on his way back to Arcturus Station, Shepard scheduled an interview with him, and after a brief meeting signed up, officially joining the Corps. However, Shepard lied about his birthdate and current age, telling the Marine Corps recruiter that he was eighteen years old, despite the fact that he had just turned sixteen years old several months earlier.

Basic Training
"Shepard! You've got bogies!"

- Bryan Iverson to Johun Shepard during the final stage of his zero-gravity training.

After signing up for the Alliance Marine Corps, Shepard boarded a shuttle that took him to Shanxi, the site of the Alliance's largest military training center. There, he began his basic training under some of the toughest and most experienced combat and drill instructors that the Alliance had to offer. He went through a grueling training and exercise regimen that had been devised by the drill instructors especially for the members of the Marine Corps, involving several hours' worth of push-ups, sit-ups, and running each day. After one year of this, Shepard began to near his eighteenth birthday, and progressed to the second tier of basic training.

In the second tier, Shepard was assigned to learn hand-to-hand combat from a former N7 commando named Mike Yamada. The N7 commandos were the best of the best in the Alliance, the human equivalent to the asari commandos, the Salarian STG, and the turian Shadow Marshals. As if to emphasize his toughness, Yamada broke one recruit's arm on the first day, while demonstrating a new move. Shepard and the other members of the class feared him after that, but they learned much from him. Yamada would fight each recruit each day, and each day the recruits would get better as they learned to emulate and adapt to his moves. During his final duel with Yamada, Shepard allowed the old commando to believe that he was defeated, and when he came over to gloat, Shepard kicked his legs out from under him. Yamada soon after ended the duel with a move that sent Shepard to a hospital room, but Shepard had earned the respect of his instructor, who promoted him to the third tier several months before the rest of the class.



In the third tier of basic training, Shepard was assigned to learn how to use grayscale, or night vision, goggles and the rest of his equipment. He initially breezed through the class, but finally met his match on the grayscale portion of the tier. In order to pass, he had to navigate his way through a pitch-black obstacle course using his grayscale without being hit by the trainers' practice fire. He failed the course the first three times, unable to distinguish targets from obstacles using the goggles. However, each time he got farther into the course as he got more accustomed to the grayscale. Eventually, he finally passed the third tier of basic training, continuing on to the fourth tier of his basic training.

In the fourth and final tier, zero gravity training, Shepard learned how to walk without gravity, including spacewalking. He also learned how to use equipment in the vacuum of space. He was assigned to learn how to walk in space without the advantage of artificial gravity. Dispatched out of the airlock of a Alliance space station in orbit over Shanxi, Shepard was forced to use the gravity-locks on his boots to stay connected to the surface of the space station as he searched for a red flag. Eventually finding the flag on the far edge of the space station, he used his life line to lower himself down to the flag, and retrieved it, returning it to the instructor as one of the first cadets to complete the exercise. After completing the space walking portion, Shepard proceeded to the zero gravity portion, where he was forced to navigate an Alliance dreadnought, the SSV Himalaya, without the assistance of artificial gravity. Similar to the spacewalking exercise, Shepard used the gravity-locks in his boots to navigate through the dreadnought until he eventually reached the designated airlock, only to find it locked by his instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Bryan Iverson, who often forced his most promising students to 'stretch' themselves to complete his exercises. Shepard promptly used his omni-tool to hack the lock, only to discover a combat instructor waiting for him. Promptly disarming the instructor and knocking him unconscious, he passed the final tier of basic training.

After completing his basic training, Shepard was given several weeks off, as he had graduated ahead of most of his class, to lounge about the military base and capital city of Shanxi before boarding a shuttle for leave on Earth.

Shore Leave on Earth
After completing basic training on Shanxi, Shepard and the rest of his class were given shore leave on Earth, where they could spend time with their family and friends. However, as Shepard's whole family had been killed in the batarian attack on Mindoir, he had nowhere to go. Meeting up with one of his friends from basic training, Nigel O'Conner, a loudmouthed Irishman, Shepard went to several bars around the city of Havana, a major spaceport used by the Alliance military. Shepard and O'Conner decided to rent two flats near the center of the city, shortly after they finished their exploration of the city's numerous bars and clubs upon arrival.

The two further solidified their friendship as they explored Havana. O'Conner often rose early in the morning to jog around the city, while Shepard stayed behind and slept. Often locking himself out of his apartment, O'Conner often called Shepard early in the mornings to come over and unlock his apartment using his omni-tool, putting a brief strain on their friendship in its early stages. However, numerous barfights and other periods of camaraderie drew them together.

However, Shepard's memories of the batarian attack on Mindoir often pulled him into the depths of depression, and he would often stay behind at his flat. Determined to cheer him up, O'Conner often tried to hook Shepard up with the local girls, but he was too depressed from his memories of the slaughter of his family and friends to engage in social activities. After several months on shore leave, Shepard and O'Conner received their first posting, the Alliance frigate SSV Midway.

Recon Mission on Edolus
"We're on a recon mission, out looking for rocks. Here's your ride, the M-35 Mako. Toughest bitch in the navy."

- Daniel Arbor to Shepard and Nigel O'Conner.

Aboard the Midway, Shepard was reunited with Capt. Nick Salvatore, the man who'd saved him from batarian slavers on Mindoir years earlier, and who had since become a decorated Alliance Navy officer. Shepard and his friend, Nigel O'Conner, were both assigned to the SSV Midway's First Squad under the command of Gunnery Chief Daniel Arbor. While patrolling in the Attican Traverse, a particularly lawless region between Citadel Space and the Terminus Systems, Shepard embarked on his first "live situation" reconnaissance mission on the desert world of Edolus, patrolling for any signs of batarian slavers.



Properly handling the M-35 Mako, Shepard committed a textbook drop from the hangar bays of the Midway onto the desert surface of Edolus. With Arbor in the passenger seat, and O'Conner on the turret, he guided the Mako across the windswept, sandy landscape of Edolus, searching for any signs of batarian activity on the nominally human-controlled world. After proceeding into a large mountain range, the Mako's communication channels picked up a distress signal from a downed turian merchant ship. Arbor made the decision to investigate the crash-site after consulting with Capt. Salvatore.

Proceeding to the downed ship, the trio prepared themselves for combat. Upon arriving at the crash site, Shepard and O'Conner entered the 'ghost ship', while Arbor stayed behind to secure the entrance. They encountered no signs of there being any survivors, and concluded from the ship's navigation computers that it had been fired upon by a batarian Hensa-class dreadnought and its crew had been taken as slaves by the batarian pirates. Upon completing the reconnoiter of the ship, and not finding any survivors, they contacted the Midway for extraction, and related their findings to Capt. Salvatore, while they were treated for slight bruises from the Mako landing by the Midway's resident physician, Dr. Sarah Greenwood.