MIRANDA ALVAREZ
][ FEMALE ][ TECH SPECIALIST ][ COMBAT ENGINEER ][ 37 ][“Name’s Mira. I build shit, and it breaks other people’s shit. Pay me enough, and I’ll break whoever’s shit you want.”
THE VEKAAN
image credit BIOLOGY A typical example of the Vekaan species measures up roughly equivalent in stature to it’s human counterpart. The notable cartilaginous protrusions from the head serve no major biological function directly. Their appearance is among the criteria of selecting a mate, as larger, more prominently curled tendrils were preferred by ancestral Vekaan. The evolutionary reason for this development was never clear. Further differentiation exists in a reduced number of digits, having only three on the hands plus an opposable thumb, and only two toes to a foot. These digits grow thicker, harder talon-like nails comparatively.
The sensory organs are more highly attuned, granting wider range in hearing, sight, and in touch. Hypersensitive touch leads to effects that appear to a human as bordering on premonition, but is instead feeling the radiant heat of an approaching body. This requires a more complex and in turn more sensitive nervous system. Vekaan physiology is more prone to going into shock following trauma. Their physiology is also lacking in muscle mass compared to the perceived ‘ideal male’ within human culture. This is somewhat compensated for with a high action potential within what muscle mass is developed, though this lends itself moreso to reflex than it does to raw strength.
Being a high-functioning intellectual species, they have evolved a longer natural lifespan. The legal age of majority is 27, while the age of full maturity is roughly 35 in standard earth years. This is further extended through medical advances and the culture of technological augmentation. Vekaan society believes in the harmony between people and the technology they develop.
SOCIETY The Vekaan are a proud people, sometimes too much so for their own good. Hailing originally from the world known to humans as Cliea 23-P15, they formed what they considered a vast empire among the stars. The dozen or so planetary systems under their control however was merely a fledgling interstellar empire, dwarfed by the infinite, inexorable expansion of man into the cosmos, for it was man that ultimately found them.
As a culture they believe in the use of violence only when absolutely necessary, never for personal gain or shortsighted actions. Man did not present itself to them as an ominous conqueror, and thus the Vekann people acquiesced to their demands. Many of their people have been spread across human-controlled space, and what remains of their sovereign claim grows restless under the thumb of man.
HISTORY Born to a no-show deadbeat human father and her Vekaan mother, Mira was caught in the worst of two worlds. A half-breed, too human for her own identity and too alien for the society she’s stuck in. The world of Nechu her mother called home is a world of human aristocrats mostly. Everyone here was well off and stuck up about it. The poorest of the planet were treated like refuse. Out of sight, out of mind. The fact nothing ever worked helped Mira learn to tinker and fix things. Her mother wanted her to feel like she belonged, pushing her more towards her human roots. Even her name was strongly human in lieu of traditional naming. But that was not the path for Mira, a nickname she took to lean away from human culture.
She enlisted in the Nechu Imperial Naval Academy at the age of 20, old compared to other cadets but still firmly an adolescent for a Vekaan. By her third year in the academy she had just barely come up short of making it into command school. “It isn’t about what you know or what you can do, it’s about who you know and who’s bankrolling you.”
She never stopped tinkering with things and practicing her building skills. Notably, she modified the control gauntlets the cadets were issued for battle sim training to include the power cell and voltage transformer from a stun gun. Cadet Phenix, with whom she had multiple past altercations thanks in part to his familial ties and his abrasive personality, found out about her unsanctioned modification the painful way. She was later expelled from the academy in lieu of charges being filed for her assault.
For some time after she took an apprenticeship under an engineer, on a PMC cruiser, the ACS Apollo. Her affinity for weaponsmithing made itself apparent here, and the handsome corporate pay opened the door to her current collection of cybernetic augments, again keeping with her Vekaan heritage in spite of her human half. She also began developing the first iteration of her drone tech while on rotation aboard the Apollo.
After the Apollo, she has floated from ship to ship, improving her gear as she goes and serving as an engineer and mercenary for hire. An engineer who brings weapons and doesn’t hesitate to be in the thick of the lethal action is a rare commodity, provided the CO can get past having a half-breed on board.
][ HALF-BREED ][ FORMER NAVY CADET ][ MERCENARY-ENGINEER FOR HIRE ][
PERSONALITY She’s easily irritated, but tends to not act on it, not at first at least. She instead tends to retreat to her work, tinkering with her armor or her drone or her weapon to distract her. If she’s pushed enough times however despite repeated denials, she is liable to snap back. The ensuing violent outburst is typically quick and decisive, enough to send the message clearly that the topic is not open for discussion. She is particularly sensitive about being a half-breed. In the naval academy she constantly caught flak for it, and has since grown particularly touchy about it. Nechu was not a kind place for a destitute half-breed Vekaan.
She comes across as closed-off, and often times absent and dismissive to random passers-by. When hired on a ship, she’s more professional, but still always with the air of being difficult to approach about other subjects. Her attitude has always been that she’s good at what she does, and who she is when she’s off duty is none of anyone’s concern. It takes a special kind of person and a lot of patience to get her to open up, but the seemingly-impossible task can be done given time. Even if she isn’t chatty, she’s a valuable resource on a ship and in a fight.
APPEARANCE Her human half has left her with a smoother, softer face and relatively small tendrils. She has more toes on her feet, four per, than would be normal for her kind, and her skin lacks the same leathery quality on her hands and feet. Her eyes ended up an emerald green and retained their cat-like irises. Her whole body is more heavyset and less fine-boned, though the purple coloration on much of her body remains as prominent as a full-blooded Vekaan, much to her relief.
She actively dislikes her human attributes, seeing it as a source of shame and weakness, and dives headlong into traditional culture where she can. There are two small silver bits above her brow line near her temples: small bits of her cybernetics. Her more noticeable vestiges are a series of small contact points at eye level around the side and rear of her head, where her control visor sits much of the time.
EQUIPMENT R-101 SOARThe R-101 Special Operations Assault Rifle is an in-house weapon developed by Pantheon Asset Protection Corp, the PMC she worked for aboard the Apollo. It chambers the modern 5.5x36mm ‘berserker’ round designed to maintain accuracy and stopping power without sacrificing its excessive rate of fire.
Powertech Systems Ltd. Microweave Armor SystemHer armor starts with a full-body microweave suit, then equipping thin composite plating for protection against actual weapons fire. When a stronger power cell component or more durable armor is called for, extra armor segments can be affixed to the existing skeleton to form a more
intermediate-level power armor. This configuration affords more robust energy systems to support ancillary hardware such as energy weapons, shield systems, drone charging, etc.
image credits Sentry DroneMira’s sentry drone is a walking platform with eight stumpy legs arranged around its roughly circular form. It acts as a mobile turret that mounts its own autonomous computer systems, multi-sensor targeting suite with IFF, and 300 rounds of ammo for the 20mm GMG (Gauss Machine Gun) it mounts. The weapon is a slow-firing sledgehammer of a gun that truly earns its classification of an autocannon. The drone features magnetic feet to enable unimpeded operations in zero G environments aboard spacecraft. The machine is controlled through a visor that links to her neural implants, allowing Mira direct control over it with no physical input required. She seemingly treats the thing like a pet, despite being a 90kg, meter-wide gun platform that can rip a man in half with one shell.