Saint Joseph School

Mr. Brayder is your Biology teacher, or will be when you get closer to graduating. He teaches the honors course in Bio for grades 11 and 12 and while you are not looking forward to dissection (will they really makes you cut open a baby pig?) it's in the curriculum and if you want to attend college for that Bachelor of Agriculture, with an eye on a future job with HarvGrain, you need those course credits.

Mr. Brayder is in his late twenties, taller than some and thin. When he's sitting down and talking about phylogeny, his hands never seem to stop moving, constantly playing with items on his desk, chalk, his hair. Its distracting at first but by halfway through the semester you've stopped paying attention to it. He's really one of those few teachers that gets fired up by his subject; he loves what he does, breathes it, seems to know endless and amazing facts about how things are put together and how they work. Even though you are freaked out by the thought of dissection, it becomes a game to find out if there's anything he doesn't know.

He is disabled; his legs are twisted and malformed and he gets around the school on a pair of crutches fitted to his hands. He leaves class five minutes before the bell so he has a chance to get to the next room without being delayed or jostled by the crowd. You don't know if its because of an accident or if he was born that way. Somehow you don't think it would be appropriate to ask. He drives a car that has been modified to be entirely controlled by hand.

Mr. Brayder maintains a small arboretium on the grounds, maybe ten feet by fifteen feet, made of salvaged or donated glass and piping. It's a labor of love and when he's not preparing for or actually teaching, he can often been found there, diligently taking care of the plants and seedlings. Whether its his scientific knowledge of the deep inner workings of living things or just that he has a green thumb, the arboretium is a wonder to behold, full of secrets and things waiting to be discovered. If you show an aptitude for it, Mr. Brayder may bring you in as an assistant in the garden, as some tasks are physically impossible for him to perform.

It is worth noting that the Arboretum is now a part of the School base.

It needs more trees and plant life =)

Mr. Brayder is still on staff as the Biology teacher for St. Josephs, running two honors classes on a rotating schedule during the week to make sure he catches his favorite students. In the middle of the summer schedule last year, he took an unexpected leave of absence for three weeks without explanation to his students - they simply came in and found a substitute. When he returned he looked very tired and was obviously having a harder time getting around on his crutches. In the past number of months he seems to have recovered much of his old energy.

The Rikti Invasion shattered a lot of the glass in the arboretum and several careful students spent a few hours each day carefully going through the seed beds, replanting what they could and removing debris. Most of the clean up work is now done however and things are starting to thrive again. Mr. Brayder has imported some new plants and one at least has a careful square of "caution" tape around its growing container.

In the last month or so, some of the students have noticed that he's sometimes met by an attractive older woman after school, who picks him up in an old four door sedan. If it's a girlfriend or just a colleague, nobody knows for sure.