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[the-colony-roleplay]

Henry Liamson-Turner | Fifty Five;  Elite

House: Calyset Status: Uninfected Elite Specification: International Trade Executive Alignment: New Wave Reformists

History

Yvonne made him a better, stronger man—a fact Henry Liamson-Turner told his wife time and time again, and he swore by it until the day she died. 

Before Yvonne, he’d had little else of value. Little that made him feel anything at all. Henry’s father, Nat Liamson, was a cutthroat business man, spearheading an investment management firm called Liamson & Taylor Investment Group. His mother, Siobhan Turner, a political trophy wife. Growing up, Henry had little in common with either of them, but his father was a manipulative force to be reckoned with, and Henry spent the better part of his life working towards a career in Business Technology. He wasn’t passionate about it, but he was good at it, and the venture set him on a path apart from the family business, while also keeping his father more or less off his back: it was a career that would bring in excellent capital and be good for the family name. It would perhaps even present an opportunity in the future to join forces, which wasn’t something Henry wanted, but if it kept his opinionated father happy and quiet, Henry would let him believe whatever he liked. 

He met Yvonne while getting his Master’s at the University of Melbourne. She took his breath away with her passion, her strong sense of self, her unfailing empathy. An artist, a teacher, a storyteller, she was everything he wasn’t and he admired her for it in bounds. They were married as soon as she graduated—and after a three year engagement, he was sure that their wedding would remain the single best day of his life. As it turned out, the best day of his life was actually that fateful evening two years later, when he came home to find her standing by the door to greet him with tears in her eyes—and a positive pregnancy test in her hand.

The worst day of his life, however, came almost exactly seven months later. 

He wasn’t the same after she died. Though words could not describe how grateful he was that their baby boy survived the complicated delivery, at a scary six weeks premature, Yvonne’s death crippled him. Henry was terrified about raising their son without his wife’s gentle, level-headed touch, and he couldn’t even imagine his life without her in it. 

After that, Felix Tate Turner became his most precious ambition and number one priority in his life. He was determined to give his son everything he deserved out of childhood—which included sending him to the prestigious private school Yvonne had always dreamed of for him, and working overtime to get that promotion so he could afford to pull out all the stops for his son. 

But working as much as he did meant that young Felix spent a lot of time with the Nanny—and though she was lovely, hardworking, and excellent with Fee, it did mean that Henry felt he had a lot of making up to do in terms of time spent with his son. As Felix grew up and showed a natural inclination towards the more domestic disciplines in life, Henry adapted with him. It was actually a delight to see him grow into such a reflection of the mother he’d never met, both in looks and temperament. So he signed Felix up for anything the boy showed an interest in, be it dance, piano or vocal lessons, and he went out of his way to personally teach Fee how to cook, bake—even sew. More than that, he made it his prerogative to attended painting or sculpting or cake decorating classes with him whenever he could.  Whatever Felix wanted, Henry set out not only to do for him, but to do with him. Henry strived to be a part of Felix’s life in a way his own father had never done for him. 

Unfortunately, good intentions are about as much of a guarantee as best laid plans. Because Henry never really bounced back after the trauma of losing his wife. He did not feel he could turn to his family for support, and he was so preoccupied with proving himself, that he never took the time to get the help he so needed. Grief and PTSD compounded with extreme stress and exhaustion from the hours he poured into his work, and it meant that despite how hard he tried, despite the good times he had with his son, there were many more where a ten year old Felix would come downstairs to find his father a sobbing heap, curled up on the kitchen floor. 

Henry’s neglected mental health affected Felix’s life a lot more than Henry was willing to admit. And once he did get that promotion, he began to miss recitals and parent-teacher meetings, forget to pick him up from school or about the promise he’d made to take him to that play he’d been looking forward to for months. Despite his almost overwhelming support when Felix came out to him as gay at around fourteen, none of it was enough. Felix had already learned to create distance from his father in order to protect himself, and Henry no longer knew how to bond or connect with him.

A talented and beautiful boy, Felix’s teenage life took him to exciting places after that, never a dull moment for him as he pursued a career in modelling and music entertainment. Henry supported him every step of the way, in whatever way he knew how and though he never gave up on trying to keep Felix close, it seemed that the harder he tried, the further he drove his son away. 

Henry Today

Henry had been at the Sydney Airport waiting for Felix to arrive when D-Day hit. The following hour was one of the most panicked in his life, because he’d had no way to be sure Felix’s plane had even landed safely. He still remembers with nightmarish detail, seeing the airline status on the screens above his head momentarily flash with a green ‘arrived’—before the entire row of televisions had been blown apart by falling, flaming chaos. For a horrifying moment that had felt like an eternity, he thought those falling rocks had been pieces of Felix’s plane. 

Their reunion remains the most relieved Henry has ever been in his entire life. With a petite, seventeen year old Felix shaking and crying in his arms, Henry now had a reason to bother trying to survive the horror raining down around them. Together they journeyed slowly towards Penrith, where they’d heard lied some refuge from some of the flooding and destruction of the more coastal cities. Eventually, they were welcomed into a group of survivors who’d turned an apartment complex into a safe haven of sorts—many months later, that complex would become Colony 30. 

During the build and rise of the Colony system and their international communications and collaborations, Henry’s business expertise paved the way for him to become one of the original founders and minds behind the inter-colony Cargo and Trade Agreement. For the first time in his life, he was doing work he was truly passionate about. Work that was of the utmost importance, not only for his and his son’s future, but for humanity’s. Together with representatives all over the world, he helped to make the Colony system the growing and prospering framework that it was—right up until the New Wave Reformists took over. 

Henry hadn’t been a difficult person for them to manipulate—his son was his greatest weakness, and with how openly he wore that on his sleeve, he made himself an easy target for the NWRF. They fed right into concerns he’d already harboured for years: whether Felix was safe among the Infected. All these unpredictable Deluded, those desperate and deranged Looters and the erratic behaviour of some of these lost souls wielding power they knew nothing about—power no one knew anything about—it was alarming and precarious territory. And when the Second Falling came about, bringing with it a second wave of Infection cases, he realized that Felix was vulnerable not only to the hands of some dangerous survivors, but also to becoming Infected himself. What if he became Deluded? What if he woke one morning screaming with migraines and pain as so many of the others had, and Henry could do nothing to stop it? 

And so when the NWRF argued their cause and used the threat of his son’s safety as leverage, they had him eating out of their hands in no time. Protecting Felix had always been the single most important thing to him, and so if the Reformists were going to find a way to control the Infections, that was something he wanted to be a part of. Since the NWRF rise, he has continued with his work as a International Trade Executive, and is now also acting as a direct liaison between the Colony Elite systems and the NWRF organization. In late 2162, he requested a transfer to the UK, hoping he might be able to locate his sister-in-law who was living in England at the time of D-Day, which is how he came to be at Colony 22. 

Henry’s position with the NWRF means that he is often putting on a front of strength and resilience with his work—but he is softer by nature than anyone expects of him, and his moments of weakness often come as a surprise to those who’ve not known him for a long time—which, at Col22, is literally everyone. Over the years, the stability of his position has given Henry something to focus on, and necessity allowed for him to regain some of his previously lost self control—but time has not in fact done him the favours he’d hoped it would, in terms of his mental health. He is still emotionally erratic and vulnerable, and though he cares a great deal about his work, liaising with the NWRF is stressful, especially as rebellions and unrest bubble beneath their feet.

Felix too, remains a constant concern—though his son denies it, Henry is fairly certain that Fee is still struggling with an eating disorder he’d developed in his early teenage years, and vain and self-centred as he is, he doesn’t make friends easily. It makes Henry worry even more about the emotional distance between them, because he doesn’t know that Felix will have anyone to go to in times of need. D-Day has arguably brought them closer than they were, but their relationship is far from smooth and despite Henry’s apparently tireless attempts to please his son, Felix is headstrong and difficult, and they bicker frequently. 

RELATED BIOS: FELIX TATE TURNER

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