[OOC] 𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

[Opposition]

@DeadDrop
Your edits are good. Feel free to move Johnny to the characters tab.

As for everyone else who is still wishing to participate in Futility, character sheets are going to be cut off in 3 days. Add me on discord if you would like to join our group.

[Firecracker_]

Oleksandr Tataryn

[O L E K S A N D R T A T A R Y N]
[35] | [Male] | [6’2’’] | [AB+]

---

⟹ General Information

“Why the name Asahi? ‘Cause I’m always super dry!”

⬈name⬉
Oleksandr Tataryn

⬈aliases // titles⬉
Asahi, Olex

⬈sex⬉
Male

⬈age⬉
33

⬈appearance⬉
Standing at an impressive height, with the imposing augmented limbs to match, Oleksandr is always a pronounced presence wherever he goes, which works out well for him since he’s always willing to be the center of attention. Oleksandr’s hair and beard of light brown are usually in a state of disarray and overgrowth, as he doesn’t really care enough to get them trimmed on a usual basis. Like many in the Reclaim, Olex has a deep scar gash over his right eyebrow, a product of his time fighting for the Tinmen. After his eyes, the scar usually draws the most attention of people who look at him.

There isn’t really a way to describe Oleksandr’s style, as he wears whatever he finds comfortable and at least a bit functional. He never finds himself in anything as carefree as shorts or the likes, but he doesn’t exactly ever dress correctly for anything. The only consistent part of his outfit would be the pistol holster he keeps under his left arm on a constant basis. He gives the impression of someone that is aware of what kind of clothing the world he lives in demands, but isn’t scared to skirt the line when it comes to being either underdressed or underprepared.

Past his clothing, his well-maintained and fierce looking cybernetic arms and legs are always apparent, adorned lightly with ornate engravings in small areas around his joints, more so on his arms than his legs. Here and there, around his forearms and shins, there are various faint insignias, badly scratched and poorly kept, seemingly purposely so, compared to the clean, spotless look of the surrounding metal. When taking a closer look, the insignias that have lost their luster are made up of snarling robotic canines, one on either side of a flourish of swords, mimicking a peacock's tail. In the middle is a simple fist, with roman numerals representing the year of establishment for the Pioneer Dogs. All of this is sitting atop a solitary skull, missing it’s lower jaw and showing cracks around the eye sockets. The same insignia is tattooed on his left pectoral, with other random tattoos dotting his body, some bearing Tinmen insignias and slogans, or some simply works of impressive art or weapons. One notable tattoo is across the front base of his neck, reading “Man is of Flesh, God is of Metal” in small lettering. That tattoo is the most easily visible when he’s fully clothed. Some older, more well-traveled citizens would recognize them as markers of Tinmen mercs, but the insignias don’t hold much meaning to almost anyone besides Olex anymore.

Besides the scars around his augments from the surgeries that put them there, Oleksandr does have a healthy few scars around his body, resulting from his life of combative jobs and work with mercenary groups.

⬈occupation⬉
Before moving to Angel City to look for his next job, Oleksandr had shuffled between many different occupations in many of the different megaregions. His longest job was his first one, joining the Tinmen Company in the New York Seaboard Megaregion, fighting with the now disgraced ”Pioneer Dogs” Unit. They were used mostly as a tool for the large corporations to handle jobs in the still untamed badlands surrounding the region, between New York and the Derelict City. Some jobs saw the unit defending the coastlines of the region from rouge pirate ships that tried to attack the city from time to time, and many other various operations of importance to the corporations.

Since his discharge from the Tinmen, Oleksandr found himself gradually moving from region to region, picking up any jobs he could, ranging from joining a mercenary outfit taking various jobs around the Derelict City, to delivering noodles for a small restaurant on the outskirts of Greater DC. When it comes to moving from job to job, Oleksandr has probably had more than most people, since for the longest he didn’t have to worry about money, but when he got cut off from his family’s fortune, he had to be more selective of the jobs he took and how much money he was making. That’s how he found himself in the employ of a High Security Courier Service operating in Angel City. When sensitive information or important shipments need to be sent across the region, his service is the one they call on.

⇒ Psychological Profile

“I don’t tend to like people who ask too many questions, ya know?”

Affable | Hubristic | Benevolent | Impulsive | Resilient | Reckless

⬈personal goal⬉
Oleksandr is currently on the road to finding his own purpose and passion, and is determined to live his life free of the influence of any of his rich family’s own wishes or the will of the corporate overlords that rule over the city. He’s not a young man anymore, though, and he’s beginning to grow tired of the cycle of getting to a new city, working a few jobs, and moving on to the next one on the search for more opportunities. As the corporate grip on Angel City tightens, and opportunities are fading away, he’s beginning to wonder if it’s time for him to leave once again, or perhaps time for him to change.

⬈campaign goal⬉
The current political races have presented an influx of work for his courier job, and while he hasn’t joined a campaign directly, the Courier Service has been contracted by most, if not all of the political campaigns for various jobs around the city. Olex has worked, indirectly, for all of them, but has yet to lend his services directly to any candidate, although, the thought has begun to cross his mind, faintly here or there. The allure of peeking into various packages or pieces of information is strong, and he’s devilishly curious as to how important the information he moves really is.

⬈personal philosophy⬉
Having been raised by a rich and influential family that tried to make every decision for him, Oleksandr has grown to have a distaste for the rich and powerful members of society that exploit whoever they can, and by extension destests of the corporations that have found themselves at home in the many megaregions of the country. Seeing how his own family and the company his parents worked for tried to control his life, awoke him to the struggles of the people that he hadn’t met for most of his life up until he joined the Tinmen.

A part of Oleksandr is thankful that he came from such privilege so that he didn’t have to face the trials that the rest of society faces in everyday life, but it almost makes him feel dirty in a way. While he does hope that the people of the Reclaim, and further, the country could have a better shot at a fair and easy life, most of his passion is manifested in the form of hatred for the corporate overlords and their desire to control everything, from money to people.

⬈political philosophy⬉
Oleksandr has always been weary in believing that any one party has what's best for the people in mind, but he agrees with a few ideas from almost every party. He appreciates the community work and education of the HyperHuman Party and their monks, but doesn’t exactly agree with their complete devotion to their beliefs, and finds them a little too “culty” for his tastes. He also aligns himself a bit with the NTP, as he fully endorses human augmentation as one of the best ways to enhance human abilities and save lives, but their hand in hand work with corporate shills and lobbyists disgusts him and almost turns him off the party altogether. The ideals of the Pirate Party resound the most with Oleksandr, and he could easily see himself voting for Petrukov, but the secrecy behind the campaign and it’s leader’s lack of experience in the political sphere make him just as unsure in the Pirate Party as any other.

⬈secrets⬉
While Oleksandr doesn’t have many secrets that could cause real trouble, his Family name, his previous work with the Tinmen, and his support for the Pirate Party could all potentially get him in hot water with different groups of people. Tinmen aren’t well liked in most regions, as they’re viewed as violent war criminals or renegade mercs in the pockets of the corporations, so he doesn’t usually openly speak about his first job. The only way someone would know is if they recognized some of the markings or tattoos on his body, but not many people do recognize them, as they’re old and represent a unit that hasn’t been functional in the Tinmen for around a decade.

The Tataryn family is well-known and infamous, considered ruthless and cunning by most in the New York Seaboard, and well hated by many there. Since their connections run deeply in New York, his family name does bear much meaning to people outside of the three major eastern regions. Here and there, someone will recognize his name from their travels, and it usually doesn’t mean good things will happen, so he usually just goes by his nickname to keep that under wraps.

⬈fears⬉
Of the many thoughts that flow in and out of Oleksandr’s mind on a daily basis, the most recurrently haunting one is that he will live a life that amounts to nothing. A life lacking in grand purpose or passionate devotion to something worthwhile. He’s determined to prove to his family that he doesn’t need the money and power that come with affluence to make a difference, and especially wants to prove that the difference he makes can benefit everyone around him, not just a select few dragons sitting upon their piles of ill-gotten gains.

⬈reputation⬉
Oleksandr is known quite differently in the various regions around the country, but the one he has the least notoriety in is the Reclaim Zone of Angel City. He hasn’t spent much time in the Reclaim, and most of his work is fairly lowkey and not well broadcasted, so he mostly flies under the radar. He has met a few people of relative power, and has made a name for himself amongst his employers and their contractors as someone that does reliable work, but past that, he’s a relatively unknown quantity in the Reclaim.

The story is fairly the same for most of the regions he’s visited and worked in. He’s become known by his peers for his healthy work ethic and good attitude, but never stayed in one spot for long. His stays were always ephemeral, at first because of his desire to travel and constantly search for new opportunities, but more recently, it’s been to avoid the ghosts of Tinmen that have picked up his trail.

Where it does differ, however, is his home region of the New York Seaboard. The Tataryn name carries much weight in New York, as they are a family of fabulous wealth and oppressive rule over part of the Region. His parents were already well hated, but following the fallout of his expulsion from the Tinmen and the subsequent revelations of the atrocities he participated in, he was effectively shamed out of the Region, and his reputation in the eyes of the public was damaged beyond repair.

⬈likes⬉
-Various luxury liquors
-Taking a well deserved nap
-Expensive gourmet Food
-Going to target practice or practicing his martial skills
-Learning New Skills or Working a new job
-Documentaries from the Old World

⬈dislikes⬉
-Poor Quality Food
-Public Restrooms
-Communal Barracks
-Neo-Luddites
-Corporate Agents

⬈quirks⬉
-Oleksandr, even after having done a healthy amount of drinking in his life, is quite a lightweight, and gets heavily intoxicated very quickly.
-Oleksandr is very particular about his hygiene and cleanliness, and gets quickly irritated when his clothes or augments get dirty. If his augments get dirty or scratched, he has to clean them or polish them near immediately.
-Oleksandr tends to fall asleep quickly if he sits in one spot for too long.

⟹ Background Information

“Maybe it’s time that this damn country changed. It’s the same thing no matter where I go.”

To the people of the New York Seaboard that didn’t have the luxury of being born into a rich and powerful family, the birth of Oleksandr Joshua Tataryn was worth little more than a grimace or an eyeroll. His father, a chairman of the Seaboard’s political council, and his mother, a Boardmember of New York’s Amalgamation Company, had come together in a marriage that made the collective public of the Seaboard shutter and gag at the same time. The hand-in-hand work between Amalgamation and the Seaboard’s Council had long become the standard in the region, and the literal marrying of the two groups even closer couldn’t mean anything good for anyone. All of this resulted in Oleksandr’s birth meeting little fanfare past his own parents’ delight.

Despite all of that, Olex knew from a young age that he was destined for something great, something grand, even beyond his family’s more than ample means. Whether it was the world-class education he received from his private tutors, or the strict discipline he received from his parents, it felt like every minute thing that he did from day to day was getting him ready for a life of grandeur. The wide and beautiful view granted to him from the window of his luxury apartment gave him a jaw-dropping visage of a city he could envision owning one day. From the sparkling blue coast, all the way to the gargantuan, steel walls that separated the people from the savages, it could all be his. It was only when he realized that his path in life had a lot more heavy-handed guidance than he expected, that he stopped being the good obedient son his parents had come to know.

Of course, he’d been complacent with the near-authoritarian control of childhood and early teenage years, but he was led to believe it was all meant to be a sort of launching pad for his entry into the world at large. But when words like “Lawyer” or “Chair Member” began to get thrown around, it turned things upside down for him. Of course, even in the face of overwhelmingly strict rules and the ever rising expectations of him, Olex was a young man of strong will and even stronger character, and despite his parents’ iron-fisted grip on the boy, even they knew when to let a caged bird go and sing it’s own song.

At the tender age of 17 years old, Olex made his controversial choice to join the New York branch of the Tinmen, a decision he could only make with the influence of his parents, as he was still too young. Very quickly, he became enamoured with the gunmetal and cybernetic limbs, the men and women of impressive prestige, the commanding officers with limbs adorned in gold inlaid engravings, it all was very intoxicating to the young man that had known only the cleanest and most uptight of comforts for most of his life. In an instant, Olex was thrust into the most challenging physical test of his life in the Tinmen’s training camp, crushing his boyish daydreams of simple commandeering his own Exo-Suit and marching to glorious victory. Brass shell casings and mud were much different than his upbringing in fine linen and classic literature. And he loved it.

Even though he impressed his seniors with his performance in training, the clamor and the criticism that the young man had simply bought his way into the company was loud and clear. It was decided that Oleksandr would start his career with the Tinmen in the then-famous Pioneer Dogs Regiment, a regiment of Tinmen that specialized in warfare with the “uncivilized savages” that ruled the lands outside the walls of the many megaregions of America. Besides that, the Pioneer Dogs were considered one of the toughest and most violent regiments in the Tinmen, and Oleksandr doing a tour with them was considered by some to be a “baptism in flames”, and by most others to be a “death warrant.”

On the eve of his 18th birthday, Oleksandr and his fellow Dogs were summoned to service once again, and this was Oleksandr’s first true taste of what the Tinmen were all about. Long ago, part of the original walls that surrounded the city had been breached, and for decades now, a clan of Badlanders had been living out of a medical lab they’d conquered, and now it was time for the Tinmen to reclaim the building for the corporation it rightfully belonged to.

The fight was brutally violent, but thankfully short. The village had sent their most seasoned fighters to defend them, and fight they did, but even for mercs tested and hardened by the Badlands, the power of the Tinmen was overwhelming. Oleksandr tasted his first bit of true violence in this battle. Not the stabbings or shootings he’s occasionally see on television, three levels removed. This wasn’t a mugging or assault, this was a war, with all the carnage and shocking brutality that came with it. Oleksandr had been engulfed by the blood and mud, and for the first time in his still brief life, he felt free.

Of course, when he returned home for the first time, the new image he’d earned for himself didn’t do much to garner much favor from the masses. His family was one that plenty of people were already weary of, and now that he’d been branded with the ink of the Tinmen, it cast an even darker shadow on the young man. Contract killers on the bankroll of corporate fat cats didn’t exactly garner the trust of the people, and the dirty work of the Tinmen was always subject of rumors and gossip, but the public never had a clear idea of what truly went on behind the sealed files and red tape.

With every battle, and every donning of his own personal combat exo-armor, Olex became more and more interested in more than just wearing robotic weapons of war, he wanted them to be a part of his own body. Augmentations were mostly frowned upon by his parents, and the idea was usually hushed when it was brought up at home, but he was now a man of twenty-one years of age, and he had the money and freedom to do whatever he wanted.

First to go was his right arm, so that he’d have better aim and stability, and then a few months down the line was his left arm to further reinforce his skill with a weapon. Over the next two years, it was both of his legs, and then, finally, shortly before his expulsion from the Tinmen, his own heart, lungs and liver were all replaced with superior robotic replacements. Quickly, the man had become almost more metal than flesh, and it made him feel stronger than he ever had before.

All the while, though, as his body was changing, so was his mind. The campaign against feral outlanders outside the city walls became less and less gallant and brave, as more and more missions involved wiping entire villages off the map. “They pose a significant threat to the city” the corporations said, “We need to take them out at the source.” At first, only the combatants were harmed and the rest of the clans driven off, but now even the old and infirm were caught up in the slaughter. Most of the Regiment kept a “business only” attitude about the increasingly inhumane nature of the campaign, but there were a few like Olex that had grown uncomfortable. Dissent was usually handled civilly within the ranks of the Tinmen, but as it grew more and more constant, the leadership began to deal out more stringent punishment for speaking out against orders. Morale began to worsen as tensions rose between Command and the few dissenters that still spoke their mind.

Oleksandr, after having seen many of his comrades rebuked and silenced, finally did the unthinkable; he defied orders.

The Outlanders had a forward scout that had been observing the positions of the Tinmen as they advanced across the wastes, and when he was discovered, Oleksandr was ordered to shoot him before he could make his escape. Olex outright refused, as the scout was merely a child. Why the Outlanders had chosen to send a child to do their spying, he didn’t know, the idea repulsed him, but shooting him was finally a step too far. The Pioneer Dogs had shot children in the past, but Oleksandr had been able to avoid confronting reality by simply ignoring it and acting as if it didn’t happen, but he could no longer run away anymore.

The child escaped, and Olex was arrested for blatant disregard of orders. His stint in the brig wouldn’t last long, though, as it was upgraded to execution for costing the lives of his fellow Tinmen.

With the information he’d gathered, the child returned to his village, and before the Dogs were able to mount their attack, the Outlanders beat them to the punch, and exploited the weaknesses in the front, and in a stunning upset, had driven the metal-clad mercenaries back, resulting in many casualties, including the death of the very officer that had ordered the child shot.

For costing the lives of multiple soldiers, including a commanding officer, Oleksandr was sentenced to instant court marshall and a subsequent execution by firing squad, consisting of a team of his former fellow Dogs. The execution, though, obviously never happened, as his parents stepped in and saved him from his demise. Amalgamation was a frequent contractor of the Tinmen, and killing the son of a current board member would be bad for business. The promise of being blacklisted from doing business in the Seaboard was enough to dissuade the leadership from executing Olex, but there was no way to avoid him being kicked out of the Regiment for life, and he was definitely ready to leave himself.

Soon after his court marshall, a few more old members of the Pioneer Dogs deserted, running back to Seaboard, ready to talk of the atrocities they’d witnessed before they were surely hunted down. The stories of the massacres perpetrated by the Tinmen went crazy in the media, with the Company coming under much fire and scrutiny, even gathering criticism from members of the Seaboard’s Political Council and many corporations. Bad publicity for the Tinmen was never a good thing, and they were quick to prosecute the many members of the Pioneer Dogs, and attempted to sweep the whole ordeal under the rug in order to save face. Even Oleksandr’s name was outed as being a member, as many had suspected when the story first broke. His court marshall was framed more as him clashing with leadership over personal issues, and less over his moral disagreement with the slaughter of the Outlanders, and his name was cast in the flames of overwhelming criticism just like the rest of his regiment.

Rather than stay in the region and deal with the overwhelming amount of criticism from the public, he quietly snuck away from the Seaboard, deciding to lay low in the Miami Platforms until the controversy died down. That would be the last time he’d see the Seaboard, as he decided never to return, preferring to start fresh in the Platforms, staying there for a short time before moving again, this time back to the mainland, to the Greater DC Region. He caught a few errant glances here and there, but he managed to stay mostly on the downlow as he picked up small jobs. This set the trend, as he would spend the next few years moving from region to region, picking up a wide variety of jobs, never staying in any one place for very long before moving either to a different part of a region or a different region all together.

For the most part, his jobs were small time, as he was worried more about finding a job he liked over a job that paid him well. His parents continued to support him, although over time they became more and more vocal about their wishes for him to return home and pursue a different path in life. Their pleas fell on deaf ears, though, as Olex was more interested in finding interesting obscure jobs, over the stiff corporate ones his parents offered him. He wouldn’t be able to keep this lifestyle up for long, though, as after a year of one sided contact, being ignored by their son, they finally cut him off from the family’s fortune, and asserting that he would never hear from them again unless he chose to return home and respect his parents’ wishes. That would never happen.

Soon after his family’s support was cut off, a new problem presented itself: Tinmen Agents pursuing him wherever he went. The Tinmen had been able to execute most of the former Dogs that ran and leaked company secrets to the media, but Oleksandr has since been untouchable because of his parents. Now that they had effectively disowned him, though, they had picked back up on his trail, sending a trained killer every now and again, in a vain attempt to tie up the loose end that is Oleksandr Tataryn.

They would find him now at his most recent job and home, working for a High Security Courier Service deep in the Reclaim. Currently, Oleksandr has been facing an influx of work due to the Twin City Council elections.

⟹Operative Information

“These are timeless APEX beauties. Never going to go out of style or become obsolete. Technical masterpieces.”

⬈augmentations⬉
Two APEX Aegis Cybernetic Arms, Left & Right: Created for pure combat utility in mind, the APEX Aegis Arms are created with as few weak points as possible, to protect their functionality during combat. What they lack in specialized utilities, such as surgical kits in the hand, or built in weaponry, they make up for in pure durability and power. No exposed joints, fairly thick superalloy metal platings encompassing most of the augments, overwhelmingly powerful motors and servos, and a durable yet sophisticated internet communicator in the left arm, these are the pinnacle of pure strength and utility, as some of the most technically renowned cybernetics that APEX has created yet.

Two APEX Aegis Cybernetic Legs, Left & Right: These models share virtually every characteristic of their Arm counterparts, except they’re, you know, legs. Extreme power and durability, these legs are fit for anyone interested in becoming as close to a metal god as they can.

Fury Biotech Heart and Lungs: A cybernetic heart and lungs both work in conjunction to give Olex a great deal of stamina and endurance to further allow him to use his augmented limbs to even greater levels. Running at impressive speeds, for even more impressive lengths of time, or having even more stamina when it comes to carrying heavy loads over long distances. Increased lung capacity and efficiency means that Oleksandr can hold his breath for upwards of 15 minutes, on a good, deep breath, at least.

The organs themselves are graded to run on the power generated by the body for at least 50 years with no issues whatsoever, and are designed to be much more durable. They’re able to perform well even when damaged, able to sustain life even longer than natural organs could.

⬈equipment⬉
FuryTech .45 Caliber “Matsumoto” Handgun: One of FuryTech’s most popular models, the Matsumoto is reliable, fairly cheap, and can compete with even some rifles, given the right ammunition. Oleksandr doesn’t carry a surplus of weapons around on a regular basis, but he does carry his Matsumoto every single day he leaves the house. All bite and no bark, the pistol gets the job done with no issues, requiring little upkeep, with the added bonus of not having to rely on any sort of fancy batteries or experimental projections. Just classic jacketed tungsten and gunpowder. An all-around classic handgun that has totally proliferated in usage by average citizens.

FuryTech/Kriss .308 DMR: When FuryTech got ahold of the classic patents from the Kriss gun company, they did what they’re best known for, and updated a tried and true design and gave it the power the new world demands. Same as the Matsumoto he carries, the Kriss .308 isn’t the most high-tech weapon, but it doesn’t need to be. Delivering an exceptionally hard punch with it’s .308 rounds, it can punch through some of the best armor on the market, before we start talking about metal power armors. Thirty round capacity, Semi and Fully Automatic, and a suite of rails to mount whatever attachments he may need, this rifle provides the power and customizability that a seasoned soldier like Oleksandr likes have in a fight. He usually leaves this one at home, unless his work demands it, as it’s a fairly large and heavy rifle to lug around everywhere.

⬈skills⬉
Exo-Suit Training: While Military Grade Exo-Suits are difficult to come across outside of a handful of specific situations, Olex still has the handy knowledge of how to operate one, and to do it well, at that.

Seasoned Veteran: Like many other in the Reclaim, Oleksandr has had a career in combat and warfare, so he comes with all the skills that one would expect. Familiarity and skill with guns, hand-to-hand combat training, comfort in a warzone, the works. There is little in terms of battle that can rattle Oleksandr, and he’s got a good eye for making sure all his flanks are covered.

Jack of All, Master of None: Having moved from Region to Region, and done a multitude of jobs, Oleksandr has a shallow knowledge of many different trades and skills. He can be fairly useful when someone needs a man who knows a little about a lot. Of course, when specialists are needed, Oleksandr isn’t of much help, but he can at least try.

⬈flaws⬉
Reluctant Killer: Oleksandr has managed to not have taken a life ever since his desertion of the Tinmen, and it’s certainly from lack of trying. Even if he keeps his combat skills sharp, when it comes to actual fighting, he’s done his best to avoid it as much as possible. He tries to give off an air of someone that’s made peace with his past, but in truth, he’s still very afraid of harming anyone else, and would rather just rough someone up and leave them alive, but unconscious on the sidewalk than to simply shoot and run.

Impulsiveness: Given his fear of killing, that’s not to say that Oleksandr is afraid of violence, and having been well versed in the art of both, is good at knowing how to hurt someone without putting their lives in danger. Combine that with his hubristic lack of impulse control, then you have someone that will likely end up starting huge melees over his shoes getting stepped on. He’s quick to anger or annoy, and quick to punch someone in the face, and with fists that are at least a bit harder than usual, he tends to knock more teeth out than most. Not to mention the litany of rash decisions he makes, endangering his own life, and even sometimes the lives of others.

Closed Off: As a result of his nomadic lifestyle, and in spite of his affable and friendly exterior, it has been quite a long time since Olex has made a deep, genuine connection with another person. He’s had drinking buddies, work buddies, a few one night flings here and there, but none of them have ever been lasting connections that come with him as he moves around. He doesn’t even remember most of their names, and only barely their faces. While he comes off as friendly and polite almost immediately to most people, they are also quick to figure out that he is a guarded person who doesn’t quite enjoy opening up to anyone.

⬈notes⬉
None at the moment.

Relationship Table Template

Character name	Relationship
[Name of other character]	[Write out your character's opinion and relationship with the character in question.]

[Admiral Moskau]

Background (and picture if I can ever find one that's not garbage) in bound tomorrow, but here's Version 0.8:

Sister ViK

[Picture]

S I S T E R V I O L E T

[27] | [Female] | [5'10''] | [O-]

General Information

“Machinic desire can seem so inhuman, but it is not, it is the very essence of humanity. It is simply a new way, a new righteous path for us to follow.”

NAME: Vera Ivanovna Kuznetsova

ALIASES // TITLES: Sister ViK, Doctor Amethyst to those looking for a Ripper Doc, and just Violet to her close friends.

SEX: Female

AGE: 27

APPEARANCE:

Bar Hopping

"Sister ViK?

You mean the HyperHuman monk that comes around here every so often? Yeah, sure, I know her. She's quite easy on the eyes, for a religious sister. She's got that Eurasian look, whatever that means. She's ambiguous so to speak. Hard to place ethnically speaking, if you catch my drift. Speaks with a light accent, Russian maybe? She'd look even more flash if she let her hair grow out.

You know, the boys gave her a hard time when she first came around. We don't get much of her kind here, mind you. Vestal virgins chromed up to the gills and dressed in robes, aren't exactly the norm, you know? She damn near beat Jones to death when he tried to grab her. Never seen anyone move that fast before. Not like that. It was like watching a dancer except the fancy twirls ended with broken bones and an unconscious loud mouth.

And then she sat down and finished the rest of her tea. Tea? Yeah, she only drank tea. Not that anyone was going to comment on it after what she did to Jones. The man was a proper street samurai, he could brawl with the best of them.

What was she doing here? She said she was looking for someone. Who? No idea, some woman, another monk. Chen, maybe? It didn't matter. We'd never seen her friend. Never even heard of her. Not that we'd talk. You learn to keep your lips tight around here. Information will cost you. Speaking of, another drink?

Thanks. Like I said, we didn't have anything to tell her. But she kept coming. Damned if I know why though. This place is a shithole, always has been, always will be."

Unnamed Bartender

Doctor's Appointment

"Sorry, can I help you? Are you looking for someone? Do you have an appointment?

Doctor Violet?

You can't miss her. Violet eyes, clean shaved head, wearing scrubs, and enough chrome for a small corporation. Oh, look, don't worry, she's a HyperHuman monk, not a common Ripper Doc She'll get you sorted, whether you've got the credits or cash. All we ask for is a reasonable donation to the clinic so that we can keep providing our services for those in need."

Medical Assistant at the Clinic

OCCUPATION:

Volunteer Cybernetics Doctor

"Yes, Doctor Violet is one of the cybernetic doctors volunteering at this clinic.

Volunteering?

Yes, everyone here is a volunteer. Seriously. Does this look like a high class operation to you? No, I didn't think so. Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave so I can get back to work—

My apologies. Had I known that you were interested in donating to the clinic from the start I would of course have been happy to answer any pressing questions you might have had. Now please, what was it that you wanted to know again?

Ah yes, the good doctor?

Doctor Violet is one of our most talented cybernetic doctors and medical specialists. I daresay that you won't find anyone better inside or outside of the Reclaimed Zone. If there's a way to fix, heal, modify, or implant it, Doctor Violet will know how."

Administrator at the Clinic

The Way of the Machine

"Sister Violet?

Of course, I know her! She's right over there. She's the one over there, the monk wearing the violet robes!

And guess what? Her eyes are violet too! She always looks so calm. She teaches here every Saturday. She's nice, but strong! She taught us how to use our augmentations to defend ourselves! She called it the Way of the Machine. She said it was a martial art created for people just like us."

A Street Urchin Sporting A Cybernetic Leg

Psychological Profile

"We must escape the prison of our flesh."

Intelligent | Stubborn | Obsessive | Curious | Mad Scientist | Meticulous

PERSONAL GOAL:

Enlightenment

"I am a humble servant of the righteous path and a practitioner of the Way of the Machine.

I wish to help all those beings that suffer, whether biological or electronic. I wish to learn the mysteries of life and to steep myself in wisdom. I wish to perfect my mastery of the Way of the Machine and to further my skills as a Cybernetics doctor.

I must improve myself. I must transcend the cage that is this body. I must overcome the limited cognitive abilities of this mind. I must perfect my soul. The machines call out to me. They touch my soul with their efficiency. They warm me with their purpose. Untold beauty and perfection awaits, if I but dare to seek them out. A new world awaits. True enlightenment lies just beyond the horizon.

This work. This work is too important to stop. The work that we are doing here at the Baolei Refuge Center must continue."

Sister Violet

CAMPAIGN GOAL:

To Serve

"My role as at the Cybernetics Doctor is exceedingly simple. Truly, it is a wonderfully clear position to hold. I see to the health of all staff members and attend to any of their cybernetic needs. Be it by implanting, modifying, or repairing augmentations. Valuable services for any campaign, although I must confess my services do not come cheap. Donations to the Baolei Refuge Center are always welcome."

Sister Violet

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY:

HyperHumanism

"We must learn to transcend our flesh, for it is a mere relic, a vessel which can carry us no longer. The crass demands of our body warp the matrix through which we perceive the world and blind us from the truth. We must extend our awareness outward, beyond the self of the body, beyond the self of the mind, and beyond even the self of the soul. We must seek out and join with the machines, we must become one. Together we are stronger, together we are wiser, and together we are transcendent. To embrace each other with love is to achieve enlightenment and perfection."

Sister Violet

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY:

Politics with a Purpose

"I support the HyperHuman Party with all of my heart, mind, and soul.

I believe that health care and augmentation are human rights that should be guaranteed to every global citizen of the world. Humanity can only advance, humanity can only be perfected, and humanity can only escape the chains of our flesh, humanity can only transcend the limits of our biological systems by cooperating with machines. To save ourselves and to attain enlightenment we must willing seek out and become one with our digital brethren.

We must not let fear and ignorance hold us back any longer. We must not let violence, avarice, and greed hold sway over our hearts and our minds. We must free our souls from the corruption that we ourselves have birthed into this world. We must embrace and follow the unified path of flesh and machine. Only then can we be free. Only then can we attain true enlightenment."

Sister Violet

SECRETS:

Ripper Docing

"While I greatly appreciate a visit from one of the personal secretaries of his eminence Chen Dao, I must humbly confess that I have no great secrets to share. My dedication to my work prevents me from engaging in some of the more dramatic activities of other members of our merciful order.

As to rumors that I am operating as a Ripper Doc without approval from my superiors, I must once again profess my complete innocence and express my absolute ignorance as to why these truly shocking charges have been leveled at me. It saddens me that someone would spread such unfortunate stories about me, but please convey to his eminence that there is little truth in these distasteful rumors. I serve only the poor, the sick, and the suffering in the Reclaimed Zone. I would never presume to act without the approval of my wise superiors."

Sister Violet: Audio Logs of Secretary Wong

FEARS:

Regression

"I fear stagnation. I fear corruption. I fear, as all should, that I might not have the strength to seek out the truth. I am afraid that I will one day lack the courage to do what is necessary. The path to enlightenment is not an easy one. It requires the complete sacrifice of the self. I worry that I may one day lose sight of this path. That I may one day forget, as she did. That I may stray, as she also did. I must not let my love for man and machine dwindle. I must keep the fire of my soul burning bright. I must be better. I must be stronger. I must be wiser. And above all else, I must be kinder.

What if I never find her?

I must find her.

I must save her.

I have to save all of them."

Sister Violet

REPUTATION:

Cybernetics Prodigy

"Yeah, yeah, one second. What can I do for you, friend?

Amethyst? Doctor Amethyst? What about her?

Yeah, she's a fresh face. Never heard of her before she showed up some months ago. Not that that's particularly strange in this line of work. Everyone good has a couple of alias at the ready and a pocket full of high quality NIDs. We're the cutting edge, baby, and the cutting edge requires some clever paperwork and forged certificates.

You're going to be waiting a long time if you wait for everything to be legal and tested if you can even call what the corporations do any more testing. Fucking amateurs. They wouldn't know the future if it shot them in the face with a .50 cal anti-material rifle.

Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever, rant over. Doctor Amethyst, I get it. She's a Ripper Doc, chum. What the fuck do you want to know?

She's good, sure. She's fucking great if you ask me. Girl's got talent. Real talent. Not the kind of talent you learn in school. I've seen some of her work. Fucking out there man. I didn't even think it was possible to rewire an APEX cerebral implant like that. Not on the fly. Not using second hand gear dug out of a junkyard. APEX would kill to get their hands on a cybernetic doctor like that. Fuckers don't know what they're missing. The stuff of legends is what I'm talking about right here. She's an artist man, a real fucking artist.

That's not all though. I've heard some heavy stuff about her. She's not your average Ripper Doc or so they say. She's not a scalpel jockey like the rest of us. Who's they? None of your business is who. Unless you are paying extra? No? Didn't think so. You gonna keep interrupting or can I finish so I can get back to work before one of my patient's dies?

Great. Like I was saying, some people, who shall remain unnamed have said that she's a goddamned HyperHuman monk. Decked out to the nines with chrome and all that jazz. According to the rumors she does charity cases in between proper work. People say she'll do some crazy work for free if her customers can't pay. Asks for whatever they can donate. Stupid. Very stupid. You don't do work for free. Never. Fucking ever. Still, it's gotten her some good will, it's made her some new friends.

Where can you find her? Fuck if I know. However, if you were paying me to answer and you are, I'd say you should go take a look at the new HyperHuman clinic. The Baolei Refuge Center, I think is what they call it. Any proper Ripper Doc would have trouble running a racket like that completey stealth alone. You'd need some backup, you'd need some muscle. You know what I mean? And nobody, nobody in their right mind is going to start shit with the HyperHuman monks."

Reputable Ripper Doc Operating in the Reclaimed Zone

LIKES:

►Jazz Music (Bebop)
►Tea (Black With Milk)
►Exercise (Martial Arts)
►Reading (Especially Antique Books)
►Learning (New Things Related To Cybernetics)

DISLIKES:

►Ignorance (Fear Of Change And The Future Stifle Humanity)
►Incompetence (To Perfect The Self And One's Actions Is Paramount)
►Cruelty (The Golden Rule Is The Golden Rule For A Reason)
►Greed (To Lose Track Of The Path Is An Easy Thing When Guided By Avarice)
►Rude People (Even Enemies Should Be Treated With Politeness)
►Pineapple Pizza (It's A Sin)

QUIRKS:

►
►
►

Background Information

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”

An Interview with a Ripper Doc

"Ripper Doc is such an ugly word."

"Then what are you?"

"A cybernetic doctor, a scientist perhaps? A student above all."

"A student of what?"

"The Way of the Machine."

"The fighting style you teach at the dojo?"

"Yes, but it so much more than a fighting style. I could show you if you would like?"

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that."

"Ah, a pity. But I understand."

Operative Information

"To unite the biological with the machine is the only way to advance beyond our current state."

AUGMENTATIONS:

Chrome, so much chrome...

"Sister Violet?

Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. She's a most interesting follower of the most noble and merciful path. I have met many loyal servants of our blessed order over the years, but none have been as augmented as that young woman. She has embraced the Way of the Machine and has united her flesh with metal. She has been reborn. She has been reforged. She has been purified.

Although she has been augmented by our finest Cybernetic doctors, the good sister has made a habit of modifying her augmentations and even installing new ones by herself. I daresay that some of her augmentations are by now one of a kind and only she could reproduce them to their current specifications.

Allow me, your great eminence, as requested by your secretary, to present the full inventory of her augmentations:

►FuryTech Medical Cyberoptics

A most generous gift from some of our friends operating within the R&D department of FuryTech, these eyes are truly something special. I have been told they are usually only offered to cybernetic doctors affiliated with FuryTech. These implants permit the user to have microscopic and ultrasonic vision, allowing for the most delicate of operations without additional tools or scanning devices.

►Apex Surgical Arms Prototype Model: Project Yasargil

Ah, yes. These arms a wonderful gift provided by some of our close relations at APEX Industries R&D. Accurate down to the micrometer and stuffed full of useful medical devices! Very state-of-the-art. I believe they were originally intended to be sold to the private physicians of only the wealthiest corporate CEOs. The result of some daft notion that it would be useful for the hyper-wealthy to have a neurosurgeon accompanying them at all times. Internally the arms are of course quite sensitive, so a thick layer of proprietary titanium alloy is used rather than any synthetic skin coating. Sister ViK has engraved the protective outer layer with a delicate floral pattern. Beautiful work! When I asked her about it she said that the flowers depicted are native to South East Asia. Now where as I? Ah yes, they are cleverly designed and wonderfully built. You would never know at a glance how much the engineers at APEX managed to stuff inside of these limbs. It's simply astounding! All it takes is a neural command for the impenetrable housing to open up and a bevy of syringes, scalpels, advanced medical tools, and smaller manipulators arms to come out.

►Custom-Built Legs

These legs are unlike any augmentations I have seen before. Sister Violet designed them herself. Perfectly balanced. Graceful. Utterly silent in operation and almost frictionless in motion. The girl has a gift, my eminence. To build much less design a pair of legs is the work of a true master. To not just mimic the human form, but to surpass, that is art, that is skill, and that is the way forward. The only way forward.

►Gaea Naturae Skeletal Enhancements and Omni-Link Nerve Web Augmentations

As you well know, to support a vast array of augmentations it is often necessary to replace some of the more vulnerable parts of the human body. Sister ViK, at her own insistence, has had most of her central nervous system replaced with a proprietary system developed by Gaea Naturae. How Sister ViK acquired it remains uncertain, but the design is doubtlessly worth a small fortune. Favors can go far as they say in the Reclaimed Zone. To support these augmentations, Sister ViK has also had a number of enhancements incorporated into her skeletal structure, chiefly centered on the axial skeleton. Having observed her at work in the surgical suite and on the training grounds of the temple, I can only say, my eminence, that she moves with an inhuman precision and speed. Her movements are transcendent, sublime even.

► APEX Cardiovascular Replacement

A favorite augmentation or so I am told of musicians, surgeons, and long range sharpshooters. Vocations that place a high premium on steady hands and careful movements. If you spend some time with Sister ViK you will readily see the benefits of these augmentations. Her artificial lungs operate far more efficiently than biological lungs and the breathes she draws are almost imperceptible as a result. The beats of her heart are likewise not unduly troubled by the demands of the situation. There is little left of the natural motion of the body to impede her precision.

►Modified FuryTech Cognition Integration Unit 190

To directly interface with all manner of machines and cyberdecks, Sister ViK has had an FuryTech Cyberdeck CIU 190 grafted to the base of her neck. Predictably, she has of course modified it beyond its original specifications and it would surprise me little if the unit no longer resembles the original design in any meaningful way."

Brother James, Quartermaster of the Baolei Refuge Center

EQUIPMENT:

Few Possessions

"Equipment? Why would a Hyperhuman monk like Sister Violet need personal processions? Why would a HyperHuman monk like Sister Violet need any weapons? She may walk with open palms, but like all members of our merciful monastery she is a weapon if she needs to be.

She has her robe. She has her walking staff. She has her shoes. She has a digital copy of the collected texts of our order. She has an ancient and beat up cyber deck. What more does a monk need?"

Brother Thomas

SKILLS:

The Way of the Machine

"Sister ViK is one of my students, yes. She's been training in my dojo ever since she could walk. Practically two decades by now.

How is she? You mean how good is she?

Ha. The girl's a natural.

She took to her augmented limbs like a fish to water. They became a part of her much faster than most come to realize that their mechanical parts are merely an extension of their original biological parts. To separate the two, to consider them different, is to build a wall between two aspects of the soul, the human and the machine, the Yin and the Yang of the spirit as the old Chinese philosophers used to call it. The dualism of our present existence should come as no surprise, it is simply the continuation of an old struggle regarding the duality of humankind.

But you didn't come to listen to an old woman teach you about philosophy, now did you? No, of course not. You want to hear stories about Hyper Human monks that can punch through concrete, bend steel, dodge bullets, and fight off swarms of foes with only their cybernetic limbs.

Myths. Street legends, of course. But there is some kernel of truth to them. We do train all of our acolytes in the Way of the Machine. We teach them to fight. We teach them to use their cybernetic augmentations to the fullest. We enable them to defend themselves in a world that looks down on them for who they are. We guide them further along the path of enlightenment.

Sister ViK was and is one of my finest students. She has mastered all the Eighteen Subduing Steel Dragon Palms. I have taught her to be one with her augmentations. I have educated her in the fine arts of unarmed and armed combat. I have tested her to within an inch of her life. I have thrown her onto the street to prove her abilities. I have set her free.

Had she not spent so much time working in the clinic, she could have easily taken over from one of the old masters. But alas, it is hard indeed to tear that girl away from her work. Still, she makes time for her forms and sparring. However, as her teacher I can't help but be greedy for more time."

Master Farah Dass

Doctor of Cybermedicine

"Sister ViK?

Why, ja, ja I know her. We've worked together quite a bit in the Baolei Refuge Center over the last couple of months. She's a skilled surgeon and a talented cybernetic doctor. I'm surprised really that she isn't part of some corporate NGO or research university. It's taken all of my training to keep pace with her. Some of the stuff she proposes is years ahead of what we are doing right now. But worse still, she'll go out and do just that.

I admire her, truly, it's hard to find cybernetic doctors of her caliber even at APEX backed clinics, much less in some run-down clinic trying to save as many souls as we can with the limited resources we have available to us. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've really got to get back to my patients."

Hans Rall, MD & PhD

FLAWS:

Curiosity Killed the Cat

"For her many positive qualities, Sister ViK has an unfortunate habit of poking her nose where it does not belong and for asking questions that are...impertinent. There are few that have not felt the lash of her barbed tongue, admirable as it is in terms of objectivity and purity of purpose. This is of course nothing new, this information does not come as a surprise to anyone that has known Sister ViK for any length of time. As far as I can tell, she has been like this since childhood. The monks of her order proved unable to silence her or to gently guide her to a more amicable path.

No one is above her suspicion or critique! I have her caught her more than once criticizing the Enlightened One himself and questioning his unfathomable plans. She dares to seek out information that has been denied her. She refuses to accept polite and stern orders to stop her digging. The beloved sister is obsessed with information, all the more when it is denied to her. Even or perhaps especially when it is for her own good. As my interviews have progressed I have begun to wonder if she would not have been equally gifted as a digital pirate, as Labyrinthine Runner, had she not ended up with our order. Her curiosity may one day lead her to grave danger. Not just for herself but for the entire Hyper Human movement."

Brother Porter

Stubbornly Obsessive

"Have you ever met someone that just refuses to take a hint? Someone that's so convinced they are right and that you are wrong that there's just no way to reason with them? Well, I have. And her name is Doctor Amethyst. I don't know what her real name is, so don't bother asking. Not that I'd tell you if I knew. Call it a professional courtesy. Only ran into the bitch once, and once, was enough for a lifetime. People won't stop talking about her work though, it's fucking grating. Like I get it, she's good, fucking move on already.

But yeah, we met at a job. A fucking clusterfuck of a rush job at that. Some hotshot scientist that Gaea Naturae had just scooped up got himself shot in the Reclaimed Zone. What was he doing in the Reclaimed Zone? Fuck if I know. Gaea Naturae, myself, and everyone involved was asking themselves the same thing. However, as it was, this big brain was bleeding out due to some seriously customized poison that had covered the bullet. And before you ask. No, it's not normal for people to use poison covered bullets in the Reclaimed Zone. We're much too simple, poor, and efficient for that type of shit. Motherfucker was flatlining and there was no way Gaea Naturae was getting him back to their home base. So they called in me. Well, they called in us. They got a hold of me first, but when things started looking even worse despite my expert work, then they called in her.

She listened to me at first. Even seemed to agree with some of my ideas for a bit. I thought we were going to get along just fine until she started giving me lip. Apparently I wasn't being clever enough. My surgical intervention was too "brutish", whatever that fucking means. The guy had a bullet leaking poison into this brain, what the fuck was I supposed to do? Take my time? She wouldn't listen. She wouldn't stop blabbering about her brilliant idea and about how this was the perfect time to test it.

Either way she kicked me out of the operating room. Said she'd do it all herself. I told her she could take all of the heat when she killed the dude and she just said that'd be fine, but she had no plans of letting him die. Of course, she managed to keep the rat bastard alive. Took 14 hours of surgery or so they told me. I wasn't there when they wheeled him out. Payment up front, my man. And if the lady didn't want my help, then fuck hanging around. And fuck her, fuck her most of all."

Winco Alberts, Ripper Doc

Detached From Humanity

"I have known Sister ViK since our shared childhood. We entered the Dojo of Determined Duty together at a very young age. We were sisters, beyond just our religious calling. I loved her, I love her still, as a dear sister, and a loyal friend.

However, I must confess that she has changed much over the years. With each passing season and with each augmentation she has become different...colder somehow. She speaks of the divine code that she has read and written, the binary that she injects straight into her cerebral cortex I fear that we are losing more of her to the machine. Blessed as the machine is, it worries me to see her change so much. I do not doubt that she follows the path. I do not worry that she is misguided or mistaken...but I worry that she is losing herself. Should we not value our humanity as much as we value the machine?

Sister ViK will not listen to me. Not about this matter. She never has and I doubt she ever will. She says that she is doing what must be done. She says that she is doing it for all of us. She says that she is doing it for them. And she says that she is doing it for her.

I don't care. I just want my sister to remain my sister. I don't want her to forget. How can she help if she doesn't feel? How can she do the right thing if she no longer cares?"

Sister Rebekah

NOTES:

Relationship Table Template

Character name	Relationship
Drift Demon	"For a demon, the Drift Demon is quite nice. I helped him get a new arm installed after his unfortunate run in with the Car Czar. He comes by every so often for a tune up, but I can't say that I know much about the grease covered man that lurks beneath that helmet. It did take some convincing to get him to take the helmet off, but you can't exactly operate on a patient without clear access to their airways"
Kay	"We have...some philosophical differences about augmentations, but we are friends. I think? Maybe. Despite what she says. I did her a favor once, although it pained me. You see, I don't enjoy removing augmentations. But all must walk their own paths, even if they are walking in the wrong direction. She brings me food every day. I think she sees it as some form of penance. And as a matter of religious principle, I do not make a habit of refusing charitable culinary contributions. What time do I have to cook?"

[Jarl Coolgruuf]

Kay

Portrait by Rashed AlAkroka

[34] | [FEMALE] | [5’7”] | [O+]

KLOUD - HUMANS

General Information

“I thought I could change the world, thought I could make a difference. Turns out the world doesn’t want to change, not really.”

NAME: Kaitlyn Davenport

ALIASES // TITLES: Kay to people she’s met in person, Citizen K to the Labyrinth

SEX: Female

AGE: 34

APPEARANCE: In a word, tired. Kay often attempts to hide the dark circles and bags under her eyes with various amounts of concealer and eyeliner with mixed results. She keeps her hair slicked back more often the not and the faint scent of cheap pomade hangs about her constantly. Her gaze is difficult to hold for too long before it bores holes straight through your skull. She seems to always look past your face and into your mind. The rest of her face is a bit worse for wear. Not that it came like that, she just has a few marks (mostly scars) here and there. That being said, it’s not surprising she constantly looks over her shoulder any time she doesn’t have her back to a solid wall. The most notable mark on her face is the tell tale line going down the left side of her forehead of a false skull plate. Such implants allow for ease access to the brain and imply extensive and or elaborate cranial cybernetics underneath. In the way of tattoos she only has one, a minimalist design on her right shoulder of a squid wrapping its tentacles around a computer.

Maybe one day doctors will invent a cure, but in the meantime Kay remains allergic to smiling despite being and avid fan of both dry and gallows humor. In the same vein, she usually speaks with a very matter of fact tone. She says what she says and you can take it or leave it.

Her clothes are often wrinkled or very baggy and completely hide her figure. Oversized T-shirts are the norm for her. She seems to have a symbiotic relationship with her collared jacket, only taking it off to shower and that's merely assumed. It's faded all over, has a crude patches over the right elbow, and there's a tear near the left pocket but dammit it all if it ain't hers.

PREVIOUS OCCUPATION(S):
► Gang Member
► Cybersecurity Specialist for APEX Industries

CURRENT OCCUPATION:
Black-Hat Hacker
”If it has software I can fuck with it. Maybe if you kick a few extra stacks my way I’ll make sure no one fucks with your systems.”

Psychological Profile

”Swear to God I'm gonna swing at the next person who asks me if I'm okay.”

Pragmatic | Cautious | Blunt | Ruthless | Meticulous | Cynical | Determined | Protective | Observant

PERSONAL GOAL: “Right now? Get enough money in a pile so I can throw it at someone and they’ll take me somewhere else; someplace far, far away. Where? Hell if I know. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Why do you wanna know so damn bad?”

CAMPAIGN GOAL: "Been running small time gigs for a bunch of paranoid wackos thinking they have what it takes to be the next Pirate Party President. None of them could do it but a lot of them are willing to pay me for the honor of having firewalls installed on their servers that any hacker with a potato hooked up to a router and a free afternoon could break through. I guess if I had a goal it would be to get hired by as many asshats with delusions of grandeur before the end of the election cycle."

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: ”Most everyone is out for themselves and those who aren’t are either lying or stupid. Other than that, take what you want before someone takes it from you, but watch who you take it from.”

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: ”Everything’s fucked and the only solution is to burn it all down and start from scratch. Not that anything like that would ever happen. Too many people are content with the shitpile they’re stuck in.”

SECRETS: ”Fuck. Off.”

She’s not nearly as heartless as she likes to pretend she is. She cares what happens to the people around her no matter how much she denies it and tries to play the ice queen.

In addition to the heart she keeps locked away, she also keeps her damaged liver a secret. She had a jaunt with alcoholism that spiraled out of control and it was only a year ago that she managed to really put herself back together. Even still, she relapses from time to time and isn’t keen on sharing her struggle with addiction.

FEARS: Her greatest fear is dying in the Reclaim Zone or before she has the chance to achieve real freedom, to leave the mega regions behind and find somewhere to start over. Other than that, gunshots make her panic to the point of a total fight or flight response. Even loud, sharp noises easily startle her if she doesn't expect them.

REPUTATION: She has a reputation for being colder than ice and smart as a whip. She’s efficient and does exactly what you ask, no questions asked, even if she's rough around the edges.

LIKES:
► Coffee (Her blood is at least 5% java)
► Improving (The world of cyber security changes daily and she makes sure to stay updated)
► Hawaiian Pizza (Yes, she’s that kind of degenerate)
► Playing the Guitar (Idle hands reach for booze)
► Rain and Thunder (It’s soothing)
► Cooking (Girl's gotta eat)

DISLIKES:
► “Tainted” Coffee (Cream and sugar are for the weak)
► Passive Aggressiveness (Never halfass an insult)
► Picking on something weaker than yourself (Smaller animals and children are off limits)

QUIRKS:
► Restless Leg Syndrome
She took a knock to the noggin a long while ago and ever since then her right leg jitters whenever she sits or lays down for too long. It often makes it hard to sleep so she drinks coffee to stay awake after restless nights but caffeine makes the jitters worse and makes it even harder to fall asleep so she drinks more coffee and around and around it goes.

► Look Don’t Touch
Kay doesn’t like being touched at all. She will always go out of her way to avoid touching people in crowded places if she can help it and won’t even shake someone’s hand unless they offer first.

► Animal Lover
Yes, she absolutely must pet that dog if she can.

► Fidgety
She keeps small bits and bobs she fidgets with when she has nothing to do.

Background Information

”Just keep going. One foot in front of the other and maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it someday.”

"Same story you’ve heard from every other sap. Grew up poor, dad left, mom drank and snorted like the world was ending. When she was drinking she was swinging at me and if she was snorting she got handsy. Took a bottle to the face and decided enough was enough. I got involved with street gangs who told me to deliver shit for them and I could sleep in the corner of their little shack. I still had to beg and steal for enough to eat so it wasn’t that much different from living at home but at least everyone kept their hands to themselves.

Moved around a lot and eventually wound up with one of the more tech savvy groups. Called themselves “The Kraken’s Fist”. It was a stupid name but they weren’t quite the dumb fucks you’d expect. They had me running errands at first, but one guy, Darren, taught me how to work a computer and the difference between operand and open source long as I got his rocks off. They even let me help with their corporate espionage gigs and account raids. Got pretty damn good at it too. One day a bunch of tatted up dipshits shot my tatted up dipshits and I was out of a job and a house.

Eventually, I managed to catch a break when a hiring manager took pity on me. Still pisses me off when I remember the look he gave me as I walked in. Anyhow, I managed to keep my mouth shut and showed what a know. He passed his notes off to the higher ups and I landed a job as a cybersecurity specialist for an APEX Industries subsidiary, "Obsidian Tech" they called themselves. Did that for a while until I crossed paths with the worst decision of my life at the bar. The rest is none of your fucking business and yeah, it’s why I’ve got a big hunk of head bone missing. But, again, that’s none of your fucking business."

”What part of “none of your business” didn’t register with you, fuckwit?”

That “worst decision of her life” was a hacktivist by the name of Olivia Cook who approached her after Kay had continually made the life of her hacker group a living hell for a solid month. Olivia got to her when she was still bright eyed and optimistic; when she still believed things could change. It took some work, but eventually she managed to convince her to join up with their ragtag band of misfits and make a positive difference in the world.

Kay and her new friends bummed around the Labyrinth and the real world for the better part of five years raising all sorts of hell in the form of hacktivism and robin hood type shenanigans. As time went by, Olivia and Kay grew close and eventually became romantically involved. But it was not to last as, eventually, their antics caught up to them and they pissed off the wrong people. Kay still doesn’t know for sure who did it, all she remembers is the horror on Olivia's face when she reached into her glove box with her cybernetic arm, retrieved a gun, and pulled the trigger with the barrel to her temple. She saw the terror in her eyes and the split second of hesitation. She knew what was happening even before the barrel touched her head. Someone had hacked her cybernetics and there was no telling who was next.

All at once her entire world came crashing down. The woman she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with was dead and her peers scattered like roaches after the incident. Kay’s first order of business was finding a ripper doc willing to not only turn off her augments, but tear everything out of her head down to the last piece of her neural overlay. That was three years ago and she can only hope the people who murdered her fiance are satisfied, or at the very least forgot about her. Now she stumbles through life just trying to survive the next 24 hours and hoping she can get somewhere better someday.

Operative Information

“I’d rather die than have one more scrap of tech jammed into me.”

AUGMENTATIONS:

► EngiTech Series 2 Ocular Prosthetics
A set of cybernetic eyes for the working class. Despite her staunch aversion to cybernetics, she can't exactly go without eyes. They do their job well enough and give her 20/20 vision in the visible spectrum. Nothing special, no extra bells and whistles. The only interesting thing to note is that all wireless diagnostic functions have been disabled post manufacturing. For any system information to be gathered, the eyes must be removed and manually plugged into an external computer.

► FuryTech Augmented Reality Optics REMOVED

► APEX Industries Cranial Data Suite REMOVED

► Extropy, Inc. Neural Overlay REMOVED

► Amalgamation Reflex Enhancers REMOVED

EQUIPMENT:
► EngiTech Rosetta Stone Receiver
This device combines several ultra wide-band and ultra sensitive receivers tuned to different signal types and ranges. consolidates the whole package down to a solid polymer box about the size of a paperback novel. Cellular, satellite, radio, WLAN, infrared, bluetooth, and even some low decibel radar. If it sends out a wireless signal, she can detect it and do all sorts of fun things when she connects it to a computer.

► Amalgamation Onyx Series Laptop
It's not so much a laptop as it is a mobile workstation. This folding, 3 screen monster is the most valuable thing Kay has ever owned and for good reason. The beastly weight of it is a testament to the amount of hardware it contains and leaves no wonder as to why most other computers can't keep up. Multitasking is a breeze and even massive simulations run like greased lightning. She uses the ungodly power of this machine to break through encryptions and slip past security systems.

► Amalgamation GateKeeper Hardware
Cybersecurity is useful for everyone. This little doodad is essentially a computer without the keyboard, monitor, graphics card, or any sort of manual input method but filled to bursting with cutting edge security software. It's one singular function is to vet all data that comes through it via a hardwire connection and either approve or dismantle the data. Though not impenetrable, it's one tough nut to crack.

► Various Cords and Adapters
You never know when you'll need an RVI to USB 5.0 adapter.

SKILLS:
► Cyber Security (Break something apart enough times and you'll eventually learn how it's put together)
► Hacking (While not all powerful, she's fairly capable against even corporate security)
► Tactical Kitchen Wizard (You'd be forgiven for believing her to be a professional chef after trying her macaroni chilli or squid fried rice)
► 6 String Picker (Merely a hobby but you tend to get good at something you do for 10 years or more)

FLAWS:
► Caffeine Dependent (She’s basically useless until she’s had her morning cup of Joe)
► Untrusting (No one does things “just to be nice“ so what’s your angle?)
► Recovering Alcoholic (Sober 112 6 days)
► Overly Blunt (Tact? I don't even know her)

Relationship Table Template

Character name

Relationship

ViK

"I… I owe her a lot. Everything, really. I'd probably be rotting in a ditch somewhere if she hadn't operated on me. I can't pay her back, there's not enough money in all 14 megaregions to pay her back for what she did, but I can cook so that's something at least. Not to mention she knows she can call me for anything and I'll do my best to help… But don't get the wrong idea. We're not "friends", alright? So what if I bring her lunch? Doesn't mean we're friends. Least she can do is be focused if she's going around ripping people's arms off."

[Opposition]

@Firecracker_@Jarl Coolgruuf

More pirates to add to the mix. Both Kay and Oleksandr are both solid characters to add to the cast. You guys can move to the character tab.

With that, we're going to close applications and begin work on relations before I can start us off. Because of the size of the group, I'll aim to have us start off in two smaller scenarios which will serve to establish each of our characters in the story, place the cast into the world, and organically introduce the motivations that will drive the first array of subplots. I've not completely worked out the details, but it may be best for us just to start out relatively close together before a rally before we jump into things.

I'll be writing up relations for each PC with either Stella or Delilah and after that I'll start finishing up the introductory posts. Let me know if you all have any questions.

[Jarl Coolgruuf]

@Opposition Thank you! I'll move it right over.

[SandyGunfox]

Picture

Dr. Parker Howland, M.D.

41 | Male | 6'1" | AB+

Genius | Accomplished | Superficial Charm | Manipulative | Sociopath | Terrorist

General Information

"Doctors heal people. But who heals society?"

OCCUPATION:

• Practitioner of Psychiatric Medicine
• Campaign Health Oversight Committee Board Member

Psychological Profile

"They taught me to understand and treat the problems and traumas deep within people. What is society, but a collective of people? My actions are a natural extension of my practice."

Goals

PERSONAL GOAL: We must restore the purity of the human psyche.

CAMPAIGN GOAL: The council of a single polity is ultimately irrelevant; no outcome of the election will change society at large. Access to the campaign is merely a means to a greater end.

My goals in this campaign are tertiary to the passing question of who wins the vote. This period of heightened political tensions is potentially useful. While the system is not itself threatened by this instability, instability is a necessary prerequisite for change. I can use this political race to destabilize the comfortable status quo, and with it, show the masses that Futility can be opposed. My goals are nothing less than the inspiration of total revolution. My means for accomplishing this must involve the powers of the system being employed against one another. It is possible to turn the players of the system on one another through strategic provocations; with intelligent application of selective pressures we may use the system's own powers against it. Corporations will destroy each other. Politicians will discredit one another. And ultimately people will come to see that it isn't a matter of which side is wrong, but that every side is wrong.

Personal Philosophy

I have already come to accept that my personal philosophy will be misunderstood. My actions will be denounced as criminal, as insane. This is nothing more than the system’s means of self-defense. After all, what is a criminal but one who takes actions that the system has deemed unwanted? It is the refuge of the terminally shortsighted to confuse criminality with morality.

I am not a petty murderer, or a madman. I am a healer of the mind. The nature of my speciality is to address the deep-seated root causes of pain and suffering and eliminate it. Healing the minds of patients is often - indeed, always - a painful and ongoing process. So it is that healing the minds of society must also be painful. Just as my patients inevitably come to me only once they cross some final threshold of discomfort, so too must society be pushed beyond that boundary before it will tolerate the painful process of positive change.

What I find remarkable about my patients is that the vast majority of them can be described in the same way. My patients come to me because they are distressed. They are distressed because they no longer fit comfortably with the system’s needs. Rather than question why the operation of the system places unbearable psychological demands upon them, they accept their distress as being their own failing. In truth, distress is the natural reaction to a situation which is intolerable. Distress is the red flag that warns us of danger, and the system relies on socializing us into blaming the flag for the danger it symbolizes. Distress is to be resolved at its source, not medicated away.

Throughout history, those who most radically changed their society have always been demonized. Take the example of Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte. Both men gave their lives to sweep away a corrupt and decadent system. Both men were consequently reviled by those who gained from that system. And both men, and countless other visionaries throughout history, met their end because they failed to appreciate one significant fact - that their true enemy was not found in political opponents, or rival nation-states, or enemy generals on the field. Their true enemy, my true enemy, is of a higher order. That is what it means to oppose Futility.

Political Philosophy

Partisan politics is nothing more than the means by which the system sustains itself. By diverting the energies of those motivated to seek change among a range of options the system deems acceptable, the system ensures that no change of a higher order may occur. This is the insidiousness of democracy. We have been given a false choice between five bad options.

The Neo-Transhumanist Party is of course the most sick of the system’s options. The NTP’s platform represents nothing more than a complete and willful surrender of one’s own psyche for the perceived ease and comfort of cybernetic society. Such surrender of personal autonomy is rooted in a deep-set assumption of inferiority, a self-hatred of man-as-animal that must be corrected technologically. The NTP’s useful-idiot supporters willingly turn a blind eye to an undeniable and self-evident truth: that its actions are not for their benefit, but for the benefit of those above them in the system’s hierarchy.

The HyperHuman Party would more aptly be named the AntiHuman Party. After all, a society dedicated to the alteration - what they term “advancement” - of the human form cannot logically also be devoted to humanity as it is. In truth, the HyperHuman Party and the NTP pursue the exact same goal: the proliferation of cybernetic society. They differ only in means. The HyperHuman party masquerades as “spiritual,” wrapping the NTP’s cause in historically-ignorant misinterpretations of eastern mysticism. Whatever one’s opinions of the teachings of Confucius, or the Buddha, or the Shinto faith, it is undeniable that the HyperHuman Party’s philosophy does little more than dress up as their ghost for its own amusement. I am not a religious man, but I shudder to think what the Buddha would make of the HyperHuman Party’s insatiable craving for ever-advancing biotics and augmentation. While chanting his name, they in the face of the Eightfold Path and its renunciation of power, wealth, and material desire.

The Central Party is an artifact of a previous time, clinging desperately to the system’s old ways of self-sustenance in the forms of nationalism and bureaucracy. The Central Party hypocritically stands for both “A Greater America,” in their words, and for maintenance of status quo - this dichotomy is a naked example of what Orwell called doublethink. A simple examination of their agenda and platform is enough to discredit them. To become greater, a society must by definition surpass what it has already achieved. Logically, it follows that this cannot occur through the means by which that society has already progressed; without change, progress becomes static. To attempt self-improvement through the embrace of what has already been is logically impossible. It has been said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result; to this end, I can only conclude that the Central Party is insane.

The Pirate Party foolishly makes noble demands via the very means by which those demands are robbed. So-called “hacktivists” blindly embrace and indeed advocate for the very tools of their oppression. Their very nature is self-defeating. Privacy is impossible in a society where everything is connected. Freedom of speech is impossible when everything is monitored. These so-called pirates claim to fight corruption with their thousands-dollar computers bought from the very firms that cause the corruption they claim to fight. The mechanisms of democracy are obviously unworkable when they themselves acknowledge - indeed, claim with some pride - the idea that everything can be hacked. In short, the Pirate Party is a party of prisoners who cheerfully advocate for the manufacture and proliferation of shackles.

Many would assume that I would advocate for the Neo-Luddite Party. After all, they rightly identify cybernetics as a corruption of the human body and mind. They correctly denounce our reliance on cybernetics as a threat to our very humanity. But the problem becomes obvious when the flaws of democracy are considered: a democratic system will only allow alternatives that the system deems acceptable. Ask a Neo-Luddite how technology is harmful and he will often give a fair explanation of the problems of cybernetic society. Ask a Neo-Luddite about the means by which technology causes these problems, however and he will respond with a befuddled stare or a mindless ramble about the “good old days,” or a hate-filled rant about augmented people which typically stems more from class-based jealousy than concern for the human mind. At its best, Neo-Luddites do not wish to reject the system, but merely return it to a previous stable state. This ignores the example of history showing that such a previous state leads directly to the system’s present state, and reveals the Neo-Luddites as fools incapable of learning from history.

When all options are foul, the response of the coward is to hold their nose and select the least-foul option. This cowardice is how Futility is maintained, and before this battle can be fought, society at large must first come to realize the battle even exists to be fought.

Other

SECRETS: Obviously, all of my activist actions are secret. This is not done out of shame, but rather necessity; the system of course devotes much of its efforts to correcting aberrant behavior as a means of sustaining itself.

FEARS: I fear nothing less than the total obliteration of the human soul. What truly scares me is how so many of my patients fear the mundane - death, bees, car accidents, infidelity, crime - yet comfortably accept the existential threat to mankind Futility has posed. Why is it we fear the simple robber or the inevitable end of life, yet we unhesitatingly accept the extinction of human will?

REPUTATION: I work hard to cultivate a good social reputation in the Twin Cities Sprawl. I have been active in the medical community for over twenty years, and have seen thousands of patients in my time as a private practitioner. My philosophy of medicine is the embrace of a holistic approach, and my patients know me well for caring about them beyond giving them a pill and sending them on their way. I have published many peer-reviewed papers on the importance of recovery and personal insight in the process of psychiatric care, which has distinguished me from my fellow practitioners; a majority of whom focus most on achieving and maintaining a stable status quo primarily through medicine alone. I routinely volunteer for charitable causes in the Twin Cities Sprawl community, attending fundraisers or working shifts at understaffed community clinics.

LIKES: Classical music, hiking, academic challenges, fava beans and a nice Chianti, reading, model aircraft and rocketry, historical documentaries, engaging dramas. And if we’re being honest, sappy romantic fiction.

DISLIKES: Cybernetic society, drug abusers, empty socialization, naked immorality, willful ignorance, pop music that substitutes autotune for talent, pineapple on pizza.

QUIRKS: I do not have ‘quirks’. I am a rational and well-reasoned individual fully capable of controlling my behavior and actions as however I find necessary. I typically lack the emotionally-driven impulses of many people; petty jealousies, lusts, and desires that give other people their 'quirks' all mean little to me.

Background Information

"I imagine, if you know who I really am, you were expecting some kind of Hollywood cliche about my life. Child abuse, therapists, drugs and alcohol, torturing animals as a kid, school records indicating a bright but socially isolated child… We all know the story, don’t we? Reality is often disappointing."

Howland's Origins

I was what the system would deem a profoundly normal child in most respects. I was born without complications in a local hospital on a warm spring day in May, 2023. Though I did get very good grades from kindergarten all the way through medical school, I neither graduated magna cum laude nor failed or dropped out. My mother was a server administrator for a small media distribution firm in Los Angeles, and my father works as a CPA and financial advisor. I have an older brother, John, who works as the office manager of a local data-analytics firm. I have a younger sister, Jennifer, who works as a detective for the SCPD’s burglary division. They are both married with children as well. Between my entire family, I don’t believe any of us have a more serious offense than the occasional traffic ticket or citation for online copyright infringement.

Ah, you caught that I said ‘was’, did you? Very well, no life is completely normal. My mother was killed during the 2035 riots, when rioters set fire to her employer’s data center. I suppose that was a profound moment of my life; though it was not so due to grief. That was when I began to notice how unhappy society truly is. As any reasonable individual does, I sought answers to my questions as I grew older and wiser. Why would people be so unhappy in a society where one’s basic needs are so thoroughly fulfilled? Why is it that the technological marvels of the cybernetic age never seem to actually improve our lives? Why does it all seem so...futile?

Based on the answers I came up with, I decided to seek a life of helping others heal from their most profound discomforts; I sought to heal those upsets that lead normal, everyday people to riot, loot, and murder. I met my wife, Sarah, while I was studying psychiatry in medical school. Ours is a relationship of convenience; she came to rely on my insights for her own academic success, and her family’s wealth made it easy to stay ahead of the expenses of medical school without draining my parents’ savings or spending all my time working. Our first child, Theresa, was born in 2045; her brothers David and Leo followed in 2046 and 2048. Theresa aspires to join the United States Space Force as a pilot. David wants to be a doctor like his parents. Leo wants to play video games. ...I’m still teaching that one.

And...that’s all. That’s my “origin story.” I’m not from another planet. I was never subjected to torture. I am not criminally insane. I was not bitten by a radioactive llama. In reality, those who oppose the system don’t have lurid, exceptional backgrounds that explain their aberrant behavior. I merely asked questions based on my observations of the world, and considered the implications of the answers to those questions. The inevitable result of a thorough, honest consideration of our society leads me to one simple logical conclusion.

Cybernetic society must be destroyed.

Operative Information

“It’s surprising how much one can accomplish with a basic knowledge of biology, chemistry, and psychology. Add to that a simple will to act on one’s convictions, and anyone can change the world if they truly wish to do so.”

Equipment

Though I do carry an extensive first-aid kit and samples of fast-acting, short-term psychiatric drugs for immediate medical intervention in an emergency, I bring little equipment with me other than my mind when I’m at work. About the only piece of technology I use on a daily basis is a no-frills cell phone, so that my family and my patients can always reach me in an emergency. While I wish it were still possible to find uni-task devices like the flip-phones of old, I’ll settle for a smartphone with much of its so-called “smart” features disabled and its GPS chip physically removed. To protect the privacy of both myself and my patients, I keep it offline and connect only to my office’s network, via an encrypted VPN.

I own four pieces of real estate in the Twin Cities area. My home, a modest two-story condominium in a middle-class district in The Bay, is small by the standards one might expect for a household with the income of two doctors. It is, however, sufficient space for a wife and three children, and conveniently located with respect towards private schools, public transportation, and the highway leading outside the city.

My practice, a private mental-health clinic just a few blocks from my condo, is a small building adjacent to a credit union on one side and a firefighting and ambulance drone platform on the other. Aside from myself, my business partner Dr. Hiroshi Saitō works in our offices as a clinical psychologist, and we often refer our patients to each other during treatment. I have a small number of employees as receptionists, assistants, and the like. Due to the time demands of the campaign trail and my other activities, I have recently hired a certified psychiatric nurse-practitioner to offload much of my less-complex, more stable caseload.

My retreat, as I call it, is a small lakeside cabin well outside of town. Nestled deep in the woods, my “lake” is in fact a manmade reservoir originally intended for a now-abandoned industrial park not far away. While I have stocked the “lake” with koi, the water is sadly much too polluted to allow for fishing; the cabin needs state-of-the-art filtration systems just to draw potable water. But this curse is also a blessing; if it were not for the land’s pollution being too extensive to be worth cleaning up, the whole land probably would’ve been bulldozed in favor of yet another shopping center by now. The cabin is where I go to escape the constant assault of the senses the city can be. I go there to be alone, and often spend time hiking the land with my wife, launching model rockets and flying remote-controlled aircraft over the lake with my daughter, and boating with my sons. Of course, there’s another purpose as well…

The abandoned industrial complex next to the woods - I own it, as well, having quietly acquired it for pennies on the dollar through a number of shell companies. The site of a toxic spill back in the 30s, the land is worthless from a development perspective. Its few buildings are run-down and condemned by the city. It hasn’t had running water in three decades. While it has electricity, it lacks a usable land-line data connection, as it was built with old standards and never upgraded. All of this makes it more unattractive for commercial development than buying pristine land, but it makes it quite useful for my...other work. It is hours away from anyone who could overhear or witness any illegal activity. Its buildings give me a quiet place to work, be it a small cabin for holding individuals or a locked-away lab for synthesizing explosives or poisons. A fence with rusted signs warning of toxic waste and some chemical dispensers distributing a faint but harmless odor and enough agents to induce minor headaches and dizziness to those unaccustomed to it keep any potentially curious souls or homeless people away, and its remoteness means anyone who does show up is immediately suspicious. Finally, its proximity to my cabin means I always have an excuse to be coming or going in that direction, just in case it’s needed.

Skills

Medical Doctor: I’m not an M.D. for show. While I’m specialized in treating the mind, I have enough medical experience to treat general illnesses and injuries, and I can apply emergency medicine if need arises. I can also typically get my hands on some controlled substances without too much suspicion.

Superficial Charm: I have always found people easy to read. It’s a simple matter of logical deduction and personal observation to determine what to say and do to get on most people’s good side and convince them to do what you want them to do.

Chemist: Explosives, drugs, poisons - these things are easy to make for yourself with a few basic tools and compounds, if you know how.

Flaws

Technologically Deficient: It is difficult to avoid technology in a cybernetic society. I may be intelligent, but no human can do mental math as fast or complex as an electronic brain can. There’s no denying the little inconveniences one faces when they’re disconnected from a connected world.

Emotionless: I know what emotions are. I know how to express the emotion I wish to show. I know how to recognize them in others. But I don’t seem to actually feel them, or if I do, they don’t change the way I think and perceive the world like they do for others.

Secret Life: My family, my employees, my associates - they don’t know what acts I really engage in. It’s an isolated life, and it requires keeping a lot of secrets.

Non-Combative: Violence will most certainly be necessary. The system uses violence to sustain itself, and we must use violence to combat it. But I, personally, am not terribly skilled in such matters. I know which end of a gun goes bang, and I know how to throw a punch. That's about it. It's important to be realistic about one's capabilities, and I know I'm no match for your typical thug, security officer, or soldier in a direct confrontation.

Notes

...I’ve told you quite a lot, haven’t I? I don’t usually talk this much. Ah, well, you won’t remember it anyway. Now take this pill and lie back; it’ll all be as a fading dream soon...

Relationship Table

Character Name	Relationship
Sarah Howland	"I first met Parker as a study partner in med school. I remember how intelligent and sincerely charming he was. Since then, he's been a wonderful father to our children and a wonderful husband. He always seems to know exactly what to say. He's always there with a warm smile or a sweet gift. And he honestly, truly cares for people - our family, his patients, everyone."
Lott Ramana	"It is so difficult to find a good doctor, and Dr. Howland is truly a good doctor. He was recommended to me by someone on the campaign trail. I owe that person a drink. Before I met him, I didn’t think I was going to make it in this scene, like, really, I was not going to make it. He’s helped make things easier, well, him and his prescription did anyway. Whenever my nerves start twitching and my heart starts racing, I know that control is just one ingestion of two small pills no more than six(ish) times a day away. Sometimes I think to myself how wonderful it would be to be that person who recommends Dr. Howland to some other lost soul, because then they would owe me a drink—while I’d still owe Dr. Howland everything else."

Scene

“Do you think I am a sadist?”

An inaudible mumble was his captive’s only answer. The man stared, glassy-eyed, at the blank walls past his tormentor. He doubted his captive could speak, anyway. His voice had long since gone out from all the screaming. Only the buzz of a single fluorescent bulb overhead and the song of thousands of crickets filled the remote cabin.

“I am not a sadist,” his tormenter insisted. “I derive no pleasure from this.”

Carefully applying a scalpel and forceps, his tormenter carefully pulled another bundle of nerve endings free of their metal contacts, pulling metal wire down the entire length of the man’s augmented arm. The room was filled with the loud rattle of metal links slamming against one another, as the chains that held his arm tightly to the blood-soaked boards underneath strained with his instinctual, futile struggle. The man began to hyperventilate from the pain, gasping for breath.

Ordinarily, a surgeon would never attempt microsurgery using hand tools - but preservation of function wasn’t really his goal, in this instance. “Do you see this?” his tormentor asked, pulling free an extremely fine, delicate thread, about the width of a human hair. “Do you know what this is?”

The man let out a long, ragged breath, shaking in place. “This is a chain of afferent nerve fibers. It connects your body’s nociceptors to your spinal cord. Thousands and thousands of these line every part of the human body. It is what proves we are alive! Without them, you could feel nothing.”

He paused, carefully setting the delicate strand aside. “...except it isn’t. This is a metal wire.”

It had taken hours, but finally, the last of the nervous connections had been carefully removed. The cybernetic arm lay on the board, bloody, fully severed, reduced to its true nature - a lifeless hunk of silicone, plastic, and metal. His tormentor stood slowly, carefully, taking the artificial limb and setting it aside on a table. “Your body’s nerve endings were ripped from their natural housing and wired into this… thing. How did this happen?”

It was a rhetorical question. One didn’t blunder into Amalgamation’s most advanced bio-active cybernetics by happenstance. This mockery of living flesh would have taken an advanced cybernetics lab hours to implant, ensuring each nerve fiber in the man’s arm was carefully mapped into place, preserving the sensations of touch, temperature, proprioception, and myriad others all within an entirely artificial limb.

With his voice completely worn out, the man could only manage a low, long moan, choked with sobs. His glazed-over eyes sluggishly turned to follow his tormentor, as he carefully placed the scalpel and forceps back on the surgical tray next to him, where all of his tools were neatly arranged. “Hhhh…” he rasped, unable to speak.

“Hm?” His tormentor turned to face him. “...Is it hard for you? You’ve probably had an Electronic Brain longer than you can remember. They are quite resistant to external interference! But once you have internal access to the body’s central nervous system, it really is quite easy to short out such a device with even a small electrical impulse.” He sits on a stool, a look of curiosity in his gray eyes. “Is it hard for you to think clearly?”

“That’s truly a shame,” he continued, after a moment. “Me? I’m used to it. All that I’ve learned, everything I think, are my thoughts, my intelligence. You...you haven’t relied on your own intelligence in decades, have you? The brain is just like any muscle. When you don’t use it, it atrophies. In a way, I’m sparing you. Even this isn’t nearly as bad as a slow, psychotic death by SPECS.”

The mention of death brought a new struggle from his captive. He shook his head slowly, sadly. “I’m sorry. You’re going to die here. Too much of you has been...replaced. When I remove the rest of your cybernetics, your remaining body won’t be able to sustain life for more than a few hours. Maybe a day.”

With that, the man grew still. Even with his compromised cognition, the resignation of impending death was easy to register in his eyes. “Now then. I’m going to take a quick break and sanitize my workspace. After that, we’ll start on your other arm.”

---

“Dr. Parker Howland, M.D.”

He smiled, waving a hand through his short, sandy-blond hair. Amusement danced in his gray eyes. “It’s a wonderful evening, isn’t it?”

Indeed it was. The city’s neon lights cast everything in a warm, multicolored glow. The vibrant hum of people filled the air with an electric energy, people filled with anticipation for the public debate. Representatives from each of the major campaigns would be in attendance tonight, to inform the voting public of their stance on the major issues in the run-up to the 2064 elections.

The security checkpoint was busy, as well. Dozens of minor staffers were coming and going, and they needed their IDs checked virtually at every turn. The security guard’s voice was bored, that of a man whose sole ambition at present was to get through the end of a long shift at work. “Which campaign do you work for, Dr. Howland?”

“Ah, I work for the Twin Cities Health Department, actually. I’m on the board of the Campaign Health Oversight Committee. I’m here to coordinate between local medical facilities, emergency services, and the campaigns’ own medical staffs. Our job is to ensure everyone is able to access city services during the-”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” the guard said, handing back his ID badge. “Look up.”

Howland obliged, smiling upwards at the lens of a conspicuous security camera.

“You’re on the pre-approved list,” the guard said with all the emotion of describing drying paint. “The venue’s security system will recognize you and let you through to the backstage area. If there’s any secured areas the door doesn’t open for you, it’s not a glitch, you’re just not allowed in there. Next!”

“Thank you for your help. Have a good night.” He took his ID badge and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Thankfully, the inside of the venue wasn’t nearly as crowded, with security controlling access and directing the public to the open seating areas. The inevitable throng of reporters inside weren’t particularly interested in a public official, and Howland walked past them with only a friendly nod of greeting. Just inside the entrance, he knew, would be plenty of virtual resources to direct newcomers and campaign staff as to where to go, but Howland ignored them. Instead, he made his way to the larger, lower-class of the venue’s catering rooms. Long years of experience had taught him the best way to orient himself at a large social function.

Standing around a table, drinking soykaf and eating cheap finger-foods, were a large gaggle of young staffers. Interns, volunteers, assistants; regardless of which campaign they worked for, they were all more or less interchangeable, and they invariably had more in common with each other than with their bosses. Lacking in real work to do, finding a congregation of them wherever catering services could be found was always a sure way to orient oneself by listening in on their un-guarded conversation.

“...Mayor Gatch is sure to have his hands full this time,” a girl with pink hair was saying.

“Nah, that’s what they said last time,” a spiky-haired twenty-something shot back, cynically. “Does anyone even remember Campbell, now?”

A skinny kid with glowing cybernetics in his eyes looked away, his eyes darting back and forth as he scanned over information only he could see. “Who?”

“Exactly!”

Pink-hair shook her head. “Yeah, but have you seen the news lately? That Amalgamation lobbyist who was found dead - they said every single one of his augs was ripped out of him and he was just left to die like that.”

Spiky-hair tilted his head. “...So? Shit happens in the Reclaim. Probably just some E-Drug junkie looking for shit to sell for a quick fix.”

Pink-hair threw her hands up, an unmistakable how do I get through to these people? gesture. “You think some stim junkie kidnapped an Amalgamation executive strapped to the nines with their best augs and pawned them off to some street ripper? I think I see why the Pirate Party doing so poorly in the polls if you’re their best and brightest.”

Howland smiled at that. “...it was Apex, that’s where the smart money would go.”

Pink-hair turned, pointing at him. “Exactly!” She looked back at the others with some triumph.

Cyber-eye nodded. “The old man’s right. Who would want a live example of Amalgamation’s best augs? Their direct competition. The police are gonna pin it on some local street tough, declare the case closed, and suddenly get a very large donation, you mark my words.”

Howland laughed. “I’m not sure old was necessary in that sentence.” All three of them gave him a look, more-or-less in unison. “...ah, well, I didn’t say it was inaccurate...hmph.” He turned, to help himself to a complimentary cup of cheap soykaf. “I’ll remember this when you lot all turn forty.”

“You’ll long be senile with SPECS by then,” Pink-hair teased.

They laughed, and Howland settled in, laughing along with them. He had plenty of time to get to work, but it was the small, human moments that always proved the most valuable.

[DeadDrop]

o.o

[Opposition]

@SandyGunfox
Howland looks pretty good, though I think it'd be helpful if you expanded upon personal and campaign goals. Since those provide the backbone of what will drive us through the various scenarios of the RP, it will be best to give yourself concrete things to work towards, so we don't get stuck in Cyberpunk sandbox mode. This can also help me gear subplots towards your specific character. If you want me to shop ideas with you, let me know on Discord. Once that's done, you're good to move to a hider in the character tab.

For everyone else, try to get extraneous relations done with haste. I just have to put one together for Keah, then its all hands on deck for the first post, which I've already begun.

[DeadDrop]

I'll post tomorrow or something i keep forgetting cyberponk

[KaiserElectric]

Oho, this is a fun idea.

School's starting up so I can't really commit to anything new for a couple days, but stay tuned, I kinda want in on this. :P

[Hooks]

So applications are cut off for this? I would really like to join if at all possible.

[Opposition]

So applications are cut off for this? I would really like to join if at all possible.

@Hooks

Sorry for the late reply— Futility is mostly run on Discord at this point and I don't check the threads very often unless we've progressed. At this point in time, we're not that far along and since we lost a few members of the original cast before the RP began, Futility is going to have another round of applications. If you'd like to put in an application, feel free. Add me on discord if you'd like to ask any questions regarding lore or character creation.

[Squad 404]

I will also throw my hat into the ring regarding joining. Is there a link to the discord that this is being run on anywhere?

[Opposition]

Any who are looking to join can add me, and I can put them in the group from there. My username is in the original post!

[Squad 404]

Amelia "Glory" Batalia

G L O R Y
25 | Female | 6’2” | AB+

General Information

“I solemnly swear to devote my life and abilities...”

NAME: Amelia Batalia

ALIASES // TITLES: Glory. Chosen as part of an alias initiative to help protect the identity of security operators at Knight Enterprise.

SEX: Female

AGE: Twenty five.

APPEARANCE:

Image Reference

Amelia stands at a grand six feet and two inches tall, which is far above the normal average for females. This is one of the most obvious indicators that Amelia hit the genetic lottery. Amelia’s skin is a fair cream color, and is blemish free thanks to an intense self-care routine. Amelia’s short, bob cut hair is light brown and frequently a bit messy. Amelia’s eyes are green, and she was blessed with unerring 20/20 vision. However, her eyes typically appear pink due to the special contacts she wears on a regular basis.

Amelia’s overall body shape is toned and athletic, which is both mandated and maintained by her chosen career. Amelia’s bust is fairly generous, another example of how she hit the genetic lottery. For clothing, what Amelia wears depends on what she’s doing at the time, but the outfit she typically defaults to is a white shirt with a dark blue jacket with a yellow interior and yellow faux-fur collar lining. This dark blue jacket also has a layer of kevlar sewn into to provide Amelia with some additional protection. On the right shoulder of this jacket is a Knight Enterprise patch.

Amelia also keeps a pair of aviator style sunglasses propped up on her forehead, though she does have a case for them if needed. Amelia also has a pair of heavy-duty shooting gloves that she wears. The right glove is missing it’s index finger cover by design, and allows for the shooter to maintain all flexibility in their trigger finger so as to ensure maximum control and accuracy.

Amelia also wears a pair of denim hotpants with a brown leather belt. Hooked into this belt is a brown leather holster and tactical pouch combo. This holster is also bound to her right thigh by two additional straps and is supported by double band webbing wrapping around her waist. Amelia wears one stocking on her left leg, as when she tried wearing one on both legs it caused too many issues with the holster. Finally, Amelia wears a pair of heavy-duty work boots that have both steel-toe inserts and reinforced soles to give Amelia a firm grip on nearly any surface, even ones that are typically too slick for good contact.

OCCUPATION: Amelia’s current occupation is employment at a small security firm known as Knight Enterprise. They’re barely big enough to be on the map, but their overall lack of corruption and cheaper pricing means that they manage to score big contracts from time to time. Currently, Amelia is contracted out as general campaign security, meaning that she’s travelling to basically anywhere a speech or rally is being held to provide on-site security.

Psychological Profile

“For once in this business, my closet is clean.”

Honorable | Rigid | Reliable | By-the-Book | Punctual | Overzealous

PERSONAL GOAL: Amelia doesn’t really have a personal investment in the current election, but she is contracted out to provide security for the duration of it, so she is obligated to remain around and protect all speaking candidates, regardless of platform.

Outside of the campaign, Amelia has a desire to bust some of the members of the old gangs she fell in with. Most of the people there, at least as far as Amelia remembers, were just lost kids that couldn't get a job. However, high up on the ladder were some genuinely bad people, and Amelia wants to do her best to see them behind bars.

CAMPAIGN GOAL: Amelia wants to see the world improved and personally views The Central Party as the best party to do that, but doesn't support Joshua Gatch due to the fact that unemployment rose while he was mayor. Unfortunately, nobody else has garnered the support of the central party and Amelia has been left politically hamstrung because of it. Interestingly, despite her overall favoring of the central party's ideals, Amelia privately favors Chen Dao due to his outreach towards less-advantaged people with his augmentation monasteries.

However, Amelia is still publicly neutral and doesn't openly advocate for any one candidate as part of her security contract.

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: Amelia is a moral and upstanding person that generally doesn’t deal under the table. Unlike some of the stories that come out of The Enforcers, Amelia doesn’t take bribes and doesn’t like to deviate from standing orders unless it’s proven to be absolutely necessary. She also doesn’t like to gossip while on the job, and remembers that company secrets are, in fact, company secrets and not something to disclose on a regular basis.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: Amelia’s political life is rather uninteresting, but she does generally support The Central Party since she views it as the least problematic of all the parties. She knows that it’s not perfect, but she likes the fact that it doesn’t seem to have an agenda that actively forces people to change their lifestyle. She doesn’t exactly approve of The Central Parties dealings with some of the more extreme megacorporations, but tells herself that hopefully, in the end, the government will “wash its hands” when the time comes.

SECRETS: When Amelia was a teen, she used to fall in with street gangs and various muscle groups because she grew up in a poorer area and it was difficult to find sustainable work. She didn’t quite do anything illegal herself, but the mere involvement with some of them would be grounds for a thorough interrogation, especially since Amelia now works in private security.

FEARS: Amelia’s greatest fear is losing her job in security, since it’s been one of the most stable jobs that she’s ever had and she had to work incredibly hard to earn the position. Aside from that, she does have the general fear that she’ll be caught up in a firefight and have her life ended by a single lucky shot, though she tries to remind herself that this is the risk she accepted when she chose to work in the field of security.

REPUTATION: How the world views Amelia is generally dependent on their own moral standing. People who like to operate lawfully generally consider Amelia to be a likable person that is an easy hire for most situations. Those who like to get their hands dirty typically try to avoid hiring Amelia, as her upstanding nature will typically cause them a headache since she’ll typically be at odds with their disregard for protocol.

LIKES:

List

Practicing her shooting.
Exercising.
Taking long showers.
Nice food, particularly burgers.
Sweets, in particular pocky.

DISLIKES:

List

Insects, especially insects in her apartment.
Having people in her personal space for longer than a minute.
Sour foods.
Having food expire.
Being covered in filth.

QUIRKS:

List.

Amelia carries around an excessive amount of ammo for her gun.

Amelia’s favorite phrase is “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it”, which helps to explain why she carries so much ammo.

Amelia still has a teddy bear from when she was young. Thanks to modern materials it’s still durable, but Amelia likes to keep it hidden.

Amelia snores a little, but denies it.

Surprisingly, Amelia’s genetics are rather compatible with cybertechnology. If she were to get augmented, her body would take to it well.

Background Information

”The future is shaped by the past, but with enough defiance you can shrug off a bad start to something.”

Amelia’s background is fairly standard for someone growing up below the poverty line in the modern era. Her parents were poor, and thus she was also poor. Luckily for Amelia, she did have the advantage of winning the genetic lottery. Her physical capabilities, being above average, allowed her to excel in rapidly growing job fields like security. Since she didn’t have the money for a gym membership, Amelia honed her body by running and jumping around the slums of the reclaim zone that she grew up in, effectively teaching herself parkour as she went.

However, Amelia didn’t get into a security firm right away. They simply weren’t looking for new hires in her area, and so Amelia fell in with some local gangs and muscle groups. Amelia was kept rather low tier in the gangs, partially because she wasn't very good at actually delivering threats to people, and partially because the people in power wanted to keep as many people as downtrodden as possible in order to stay in power. However, Amelia's life with the gangs was shattered when she was told to intimidate a shopkeeper for protection money on her own. She was given a screwdriver and told to put it through their kneecap should they not have the money. Amelia bounced along happily, as this was just normal business to her and people usually coughed the money up pretty quickly. She was also eager to "prove herself" after having been near the bottom of the ladder for months.

When Amelia arrived at the shop, she picked the lock on the back door and snuck inside. There she found the owner, and her worldview shattered. The owner was old and withered, confined to a wheelchair with his legs mangled beyond repair. He glared at Amelia angrily before beginning to shout at her. "Oh, here to 'collect' again, are you?! Huh, punk?!" He began to wheel himself towards Amelia aggressively, and Amelia turned and ran, dropping the screwdriver as she went.

Confronted with the harsh reality of her gang work, Amelia's view shattered. She never went back to the "hub house" to report what had happened. She instead ducked into a random bar to hide. The gangs never really bothered with the bars, mainly because they were one of the few places in the slums that made enough money to afford security. Luckily for Amelia, there was a recruiting officer there that night. With nowhere else to go, Amelia begged for a job. Thankfully, he said yes.

Amelia's former comrades in crime never heard from her in person again, but a few news reports featuring her have riled them up. They're furious that she's "gone legit" and abandoned their operation. However, thanks to the alias initiative that Knight Enterprise put in place, they know little about her current whereabouts, and even then only a few remember her. However, those few have become powerful people within the gangs and might become a thorn in Amelia's side should they learn where she's working.

Amelia has been working for Knight Enterprise since she was twenty three, and was only recently assigned to the campaign trail after a college of hers developed a really nasty case of shingles and had to be submitted to a local hospital for treatment. Knight Enterprise was never one to leave a contract short staffed, and so Amelia was dispatched to fill in the gap.

Operative Information

“This is Glory, go ahead.”

AUGMENTATIONS: None currently.

EQUIPMENT:

Amelia’s equipment

Amelia’s gun: FuryTech “Grizzly” .50 AE handgun.

Image Reference

Grizzly is Amelia’s handgun and weapon of choice for security detail. It’s chambered for the beastly .50 Action Express cartridge, and holds seven rounds total per magazine. Amelia has chosen to specialize in this large caliber specifically because of the growing influence of dermal implant armor combined with standard body armor.

Amelia has also had her Grizzly modified with what is known as a “Smartgun System” that feeds weapon data to a pair of synced Augmented Reality (AR) supporting devices, be these cybereyes, glasses, goggles, or contacts lenses. Amelia’s smartgun features are slightly inferior compared to other smartguns because she uses a pair of contact lenses to sync up with her gun instead of the widely accepted cybereye implant. The most obvious aspect of the smartgun system is the camera it uses to gather information to feed its various assisting tools. On Amelia’s gun in specific, the recoil spring plug was replaced with a camera. Since this is in a very active part of the gun, the camera has specifically been heavily reinforced and all optional hardening upgrades have been added to it. Including the lens being made out of ballistic-rated materials that are virtually impossible to damage indirectly. So, essentially, Amelia doesn’t have to worry about the camera lens getting scratched up and her smartgun feeding her incorrect information, or that the recoil of her gun will break the internal parts of the camera.

In combat, Amelia’s smartgun features the following information displayed in a HUD or floating around the weapon depending on circumstance:

Distance to target.
Remaining ammunition.
Trajectory projection laser to assist with aiming. (Visible exclusively to Amelia’s AR contacts.)
Bullet drop/sway calculation, with the trajectory projection laser adjusted accordingly.
If the gun has the safety engaged or not.

When Amelia engaged maintenance mode on the smartgun system it instead gives her a different display of more technical data that can be used to check if the gun needs repairs, this includes information like heat buildup in the gun, material stress, and part wear. It also keeps track of the time between maintenance sessions and warns Amelia when the gun needs a routine disassembly and cleaning.

Amelia typically keeps one magazine loaded in her gun with a round in the chamber and the safety on, and carries no less than six additional magazines in her tactical pouches.

FuryTech “Smart” Contacts.

These contacts are what house the smartlink technology that’s linked to Amelia’s gun, as well as augmented reality (AR) technology. As a way of differentiating them from regular contacts, they’re colored pink. When worn, they color correct to eliminate the pink hue and then provide an unobstructive AR HUD. Features of this hud include:

Time.
Weather alerts.
Location of smartgun linked weapons.
Smartgun smartlink.
Light and glare correction.
GPS.

Sunglasses: Amelia’s aviator sunglasses aren’t anything special. She just likes wearing them for when it’s too bright for the smart contacts to correct entirely.

Handcuffs: Amelia has two pairs of well-made handcuffs should someone need serious detaining.

Radio: Amelia has a high end handheld transceiver, and it includes an earpiece for when Amelia needs her hands free.

Cellphone: Amelia carries a flip-phone styled cellphone. It lacks some of the functions of a more modern design, but since Amelia’s work-mandated programs can either use AR or don’t mandate a touchscreen, Amelia is able to get away with the older form factor.

SKILLS:

Marksmanship: Amelia is a good shot with her pistol, and can even manage good long-range shots due to the great power retention over distance that the powerful .50 AE rounds provide.

Close Combat Training: Given that Amelia’s primary weapon is a pistol, she’s also opted to train herself in hand to hand combat for defense in the event that someone manages to rush her at a bad moment. In specific, she’s been trained in a mix of boxing and wrestling.

Attention to detail: Amelia’s security training involved picking out minute differences between setups and paying careful attention to security cameras, and as such she’s capable of spotting small differences that would indicate something has been tampered with, and she’s good at watching a dozen security screens at once for suspicious activity.

Athletics: Amelia doesn’t skimp on her personal fitness, and has gotten some more official training on parkour ever since she joined Knight Enterprise. Amelia’s stamina allows her to run for approximately forty minutes without stopping.

FLAWS:

“Protocol dictates…”: Amelia is extremely strict about protocol. This is a bit of a double edged sword in that while it makes her look good to her superiors, it means that it also takes her a long time to accomplish some things that could be accomplished much quicker by some others. As an example: sending all evidence off for testing and letting the “thinkers” at Knight Enterprise get it correct instead of risking getting something wrong. Meanwhile, the person responsible has already managed to get out of the scene and is well on their way to a safehouse.

Structurally dependant: Amelia is highly dependant on having a good chain of command, clear orders, and consistent communication with the other members of the security detail. Should she be forced to improvise without any kind of commanding officer, her ability to effectively respond to a situation will be extensively hindered.

Rigidity: Amelia has been given extensive scenario training, and unfortunately it’s been effective at drilling specific situations into her without room for adaptation. Amelia will frequently be quick to come up with a plan, but her plans are almost always the same and simple pattern recognition will allow people to interpret what she’ll do next with ease.

Overzealousness: Amelia is frequently keen to see something through to completion, even if it’s something small that really doesn’t need to be figured out. Thus, her time is easily consumed by menial work, like filling out situation reports. When Amelia dedicates herself to a task she works until it’s done, frequently at the expense of getting anything else done.

NOTES:

Amelia’s personal vehicle is an Engitech Mirage motorcycle.

Here's my bio, please tell me if there's anything wrong!

Updated with given feedback. Working on relations now.

[Opposition]

@Valor
Amelia is looking good thus far. It'll be interesting to have the bodyguard sort on scene for inevitable SNAFU that occurs when the Reclaim Zone gathers. The sheet created a solid picture of what Amelia's role will be within the group dynamic, though it's hard to understand the direction in which the character will be taken. I think more clearly defined personal and campaign goals could help here. Since a character's drives are what's going to give them an active role in the story and certain tasks to go after as well as helping me better direct the right subplots to them, they are crucial to any character in Futility. Everyone should have overarching goals in life, even if they may not seem immediately obvious.

What may help with that is more fleshed out background details. This is another instance that can help me give your character a more direct role in the story, rather than relying on shots in the dark to create engagement. Right now, I don't know much about Amelia that doesn't revolve around her work, which is certainly important, but the details you've added give a lot of room for intrigue. For example, what sort of acts, jobs, characters, and scenes was Amelia experiencing when working with these 'legal grey area' gangs? What made Amelia's mind change so easily when she met a security recruiter? How did her former colleagues react when she abandoned their cause? These could be great questions to answer to allow for dynamic progression and a variety of inputs on Amelia's overall story.

Otherwise, I like what you've got so far. As you work towards those major points, you're also welcome to start working on your character's relations with other characters. The table template for that is in the OOC post. I write a connection with every character with at least one of my two characters, but beyond that, every player should have at least two connections to help us avoid drawn out mistrust and lack of cooperation. Good work!

[NoriWasHere]

For your consideration, S'venia.

S'venia

Credit for image

[S’venia “The Truth” Skor]

[30] | [F] | [5’11”] | [AB negative]

General Information

NAME:

S’venia Skor

ALIASES // TITLES:

Svei

The Truth

The Purple Streak

SEX:

F

AGE:

30

APPEARANCE:

S'venia stands at the height of five foot, eleven inches tall with a lithe feminine frame. She keeps her hair cut to a medium length bob that is both stylish and functional, with the occasional ponytail when needed. While she is a brunette by nature, she has dyed her hair blue with a single purple streak for the past five years, earning herself the nickname the purple streak in the process. Her natural eye color is a brown color that often changes to a shade of green. Her left eye sports an eye-spy contact lens that serves as her camera that, while not ordinarily visible, can be seen when recording as an orange ring appears over her eyes. The set of three hexagonal tattoos to the left of the eye is a set of control panels that are required to be used with the contact camera, a regulation that for once S’venia wishes was dropped. While she is never one to be overly fancy, instead, she tends to stick with the tried and tested look of black boots over-top simple jeans underneath a simple t-shirt. She does tend to vary this simple look with any number of jackets; the color and style depending on the day. She tends to focus on a very colorful and over-top style that is all too in fashion right now or very basic leather for her jackets, with very few that fall in the middle.

OCCUPATION:

South City Blues:

S'venia works for the South City Blues as a journalist. Her job has her traversing the city in search of stories to tell. She has a deep network of contacts that send her information, what they saw or what is going down. A regular part of her job is traveling the district. As such, she has come to know a great deal of the residents. She has traversed, with caution, the war has torn outer regions and has troves of videos of the carnage. She has crossed across the homeless within and heard their voices. From here, she connects the dots and finds a story to tell that will not only not get her fired, but also get enough views to pay the bills. Sometimes she is sent to cover an event. While she does not live the most glamorous life, her job still keeps the lights on and allows her to continue to push for a change.

Dexter Campbell's Campaign Team -

S'venia worked, and still does in some sense, as a communication director to try and help get Dexter Campbell elected to the mayor's chair. He had a vision for the people, one that S'venia thought could be sprung up the political ladder. S'venia had grand plans for what the campaign could do. Unfortunately, as the world saw, the Ripper as it became named saw to it that Dexter would be wounded and it nearly took out Gatch as well. Shortly thereafter, all traces of Dexter vanished. The team fractured and went there separate way from there, to S'venias protests. Dexter had started something, and S'venia want to continue it. She could not convince any of the others and she can not blame them for their decision. This world consumes those that seek to shine a light of the filth. She sometimes brings up her old files to see if she missed any connections, any greater story as to how everything happened but everything appears to be known. She wonders what ended up happening to Dex. The photos of the would-be assassin still exist, hidden among layers and layers of security.

The Truth: Under the Umbrella of the Broker.

S'venia is The Truth, a virtual persona she has adopted to both keep her safe and to build her brand. She knows that change is coming. The politicians and mega-corps don't see it, but S'venia knows the people are ready. She has watched as they witnessed countless atrocities. From the war-torn hellscape that the corporations have enacted on our borders to the gangs running free, they have experienced this hell on earth. She knows the people are ready for more. She wants to be the one to show them how to get it.

She is afforded this luxury because she is under the protection of the Information Broker. After the team split after the debate, S'venia resumed a more active role as the Truth and as such, came further into the shade of the Brokers umbrella. She knows little of the individual who holds the title, her only interactions come with their agents, but the stories of them are concerning. When an individual gets too involved, and too on the radar of those who with the power to make people disappear, the Broker calls them in. What happens next is still a bit of a mystery. Some say they are moved to a safe location to continue their arts, others say something more nefarious happens. One thing S'venia knows, for sure, is that if the day does come and they try and take her away, she may not go as willingly as she let on initially.

Psychological Profile

“The Truth is what allows me to be free.”

Resourceful | Confident | Restrained | Impartial | Arrogant | Impetuous | Paranoid

PERSONAL GOAL: (Why are you still around? What are you trying to achieve?)

S'venia knows the people need a voice to unite behind to go after these corporations and their death squads. She wants to be that voice.

CAMPAIGN GOAL: (Why are you on the campaign trail? What are you trying to do for your relevant platform?)

S'venia’s goal is simple; for her to start making progress on her platform, she needs to learn more about this corrupt world. She has seen the horrors that have been brought down on her district, most haven't; if they have, they turned a blind eye. S'venia is here to expose the terrible situations to the masses. She has traversed the war-torn outskirts and has numerous videos of the mayhem these corporations have started. She has seen many children lose their parents, children, their futures, and all this in the name of corporate greed. The truth of the matter is this is not okay. The masses have seen the bodies in the streets and have turned a blind eye to the status quo. S'venia wants the people to not have to hide inside their homes as the corps fight it out to decide which one gets to bend and fuck them over.

S'venia has seen the homeless crowd the streets. The masses have turned a blind eye to them, but she hasn't. She has seen the people with bodies broken by unsafe work conditions and watched as their children get pressed into gangs for security. She has watched the people of this district make terrible decisions to survive, and so have the masses.

S'venia is here to expose the system and bring power back to the people, but thus far she is alone in her crusade. She is one voice. She can not hope to bring the people back to their rightful glory without learning what she is up against. She plans to find a way into one of these local elections and use her talents to get them elected. Get her foot in the door if you will. From there, she will learn what skeletons hide in which closets, what secrets can be learned, and how to expose them for the monsters they are. She got a taste of the process with Dex, she wants to take it another step with this cycle.

In the virtual, the Truth shall set her free.

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: (Who are you really? What morally defines you? What drives you?)

"I am a harbinger of change. I am but one voice, but soon I hope to conduct the symphony that we united shall sing back at the darkness. The corporations have turned a blind eye to us. They think we are weak and we listened."

S'venia believes there is a clear divide between good and evil but that there is not a clear divide between a good and an evil person. She has watched as ordinary people are forced to do evil things in the name of survival. She has also written about the "good" that a corporation does as it tries to shape its image. She sees the contradictions as clear as day. She wants to expose them and have those who have suffered remembered. The corrupt have had their time, she says, and it's time for them to reap what they sowed.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: (What are your views on the world? While a partisan identity would be nice to include, feel free to define yourself outside of the five parties.)

S'venias goal is ultimately the gift of choice for the people and the power to be held accountable. She wants the mega-corps who've waged wars on her city to be forced in front of the people and have their verdicts decided by those who have suffered under them. She wants the politicians who have taken "campaign contributions" exposed and voted out. She wants the people to have a voice and to not live in fear of using it.

She most closely identifies with the Pirate Party but has been put off by them as of late. From their shadow campaign where they act like the others, not revealing the source of their funding, making her regret her initial support. Although there are still numerous members of the party that she is close with.

SECRETS: (What are you hiding? What would it cost you if someone found out what’s behind the veil?)

Her role as the Truth is here most closely held secret. From her videos about the political crisis caused by a specific one, to the dangers of the corporations, S'venia has said a lot of things about a lot of people. If someone were to trace it back to her, she knows she must accept her fate.

S'venia often trades in secrets. She learns a lot on her journeys around the district, and from her colleagues. From the location of a bounty to a gang to the secrets she overheard to the source of them, she often finds a way to make a bad situation worse for others. If it was revealed she did this, it would mark her and ruin her reputation as a journalist.

She has seen more than she shares. She has troves of data, video, and recordings of influential individuals involved in less than legal situations. While she sometimes uses this as ammo to fire back at them as The Truth, the fact that such a trove exists makes it a threat if it was revealed.

FEARS: (What keeps you up at night? What makes you freeze up in the moment? What do you avoid at all costs?)

Corporate death squads.
Becoming consumed by the filth and becoming another cog.
Losing my voice and will to bring change.
The further loss of our rights
Further environmental collapse
Enforcers

REPUTATION: (How does the world view you? What are you known for? How do your people act around you?)

S'venia is still a fly under the radar of those in the know. While her articles can fluctuate in popularity and her name brought up, she is not someone who draws a crowd in real life. Her pieces are fluff. They make the powerful feel secure, the popular feel adored, and their fans seen.

When she adopts the persona of The Truth she is still relatively unknown. While she has a small base of followers who listen, she is still dwarfed by the sheer number of cogs. She is slowly trying to make an inroad into gaining a bigger audience. Her voice is not enough, she needs to find some more explosive content to put in front of it.

As a campaign member, she has a mixed reception. While on one hand she handled her role with class and did have some success, on the other the stigma associated with what happened still exists.

LIKES: (Feel free to list a few.)

Friends and people

Old books and movies, the new stuff just are too edited, you know?

Writing

Talking at great lengths about positive strides no matter where.

Colorful hair colors

Nicknames, both giving and receiving.

Technology and gadgets
DISLIKES: (Same as above)

Lack of focus. If you can't lock yourself into the moment, then how can you expect to secure your future.

Indecisiveness

Corporations and gangs.

Overly optimistic personalities. A strange dislike as her public persona is the same. Yet she can not stand the type of people who hope for a better day but make no attempt to bring it about. Most optimists speak simply of the corporations making changes on their own accord. Most of them scream that better days are coming if we show them what we have to deal with. They need to tell them directly.

Overly augmented individuals. Mental decay is not worth it.

QUIRKS: (What makes you unique for better or worse?)

She is always humming a song. It has no correlation to a song that may be playing at the bar, nor the song sung by the singer during karaoke, but it is clearly remarkable. When asked what that song is, she will provide an answer. If one were to search the song, it would always end up being incorrect.

She is continually adjusting her posture to ensure the perfect balance between perfect and comfortable. To those who have ideal posture, she will appear to not be great, but those with bad posture will feel like she goes enough to consider it 'perfect.'

Background Information

“You can be silent about our situation, or you can take action. The risks are the same with a different filter placed on the end.”

S'venia lived a quiet start to her life. She spent her days exploring, listening, and learning about the developing world around her. Her parents were nothing more than cogs in the corporate machine, and they slaved away to eke out a living. While they were not poor, they were a long life away from luxury. She at least had food on the table for dinner but never really had the fanciest of toys or clothes. Even though their conversations were composed of wanting, they did little to upset the status quo. While unable to provide a lot, her parents did strive to make sure she was educated. Instead of trusting the ever crumbling public systems, she instead spent most of her time away from home at some of the cheapest private schools. While they were not much better than their crumbling counterparts, they at least attracted some teachers who wanted to teach. During these years, she was often distracted by the world around her, and she often allowed her imagination to replace the images of the decaying world with something else.

As she grew into her teen years, she discovered she had a natural ability to write and excellent attention to detail. She could recall minute details of conversations, and her writing style lent itself to these detailed stories. She eventually decided to focus her attention on her future and took a passion for journalism. She went to the best college a poor person could get loans for, made a lot of friends along the way, and graduated with decent grades and a disdain for the current state of higher education. Quickly, S'venina learned that the job market was overcrowded in every regard, and even with a degree, finding a job was not an easy task. It took a lot of convincing, a lot of favors for a friend, and hours of hard work before she got work as an unpaid intern at a local news station, the South City Blues. She has since made it up the ladder in the years since and is a full-time journalist that has somehow earned the trust of her editors. Even though she still has the same attention to detail, she has chosen to omit specific information from her stories. Nothing serious, but if an unpleasant aspect could paint the wrong person in a dangerous way would end up in the trash.

Five years ago, she lost her family to a random accident. Some poor residents tried to rob the wrong person, triggering their security detail, which resulted in an unfortunate massacre of both the perp and innocents alike. The story is not one that is too all well known, the powerful have a way to alter the truth. The news talked about the attack on the wealthy businessman and how his security detail bravely defended their client. No one spoke about the three hundred rounds fired by their guns, nor did they talk about the two dozen people killed who had no part to play. Her parents were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The news still judged them as guilty, even though their only crime was to stay late at work and leave at the wrong time.

They never once spoke out about this unjust system. Her parents kept their silence and worked as useful cogs for the machine. They warned S'venia to not speak out about those in power because they had a way of making people disappear. When she started going to school, they warned her of not reading too deep into the stories involving the powerful because there could be some dangerous truths hiding in plain sight. When she became a journalist, they drove home the point to never publish anything negative about the mega-corps because they would bury her and make sure she never found work again. They kept their mouths shut, worked their lives away, and were still consumed by the filth.

S'venia, however, could not speak out about this injustice. She could not lend her voice, her writing even, to the cause as to do so would mean her fate would end up the same. After many weeks of grieving, a lot of visits from friends, and extended family, she finally vented to a close confidant. Her voice was no longer her own. She spoke about a dream she never knew she wanted. A world where the people could hold the strong and powerful accountable and bind their fates to the will of the people. A world where we, the people, held power. An existence not tied to one's income but to one's voice. After the whole tirade S'venia collapsed exhausted and emotional. If it were any other friend, the end might have been different. Yet it was one of her oldest friends, a man named Ajax Quanta, that helped her. He listened as she told of a new life, listened as she broke down as reality came back, and told her she was not alone.

He would check in on S'venia over the next few weeks. After S'venia finally leveled off from the emotional high, he revealed his association with a group. They called themselves agents and were a group that worked for the Broker. He explained the Broker offered protection for those who have the will to put themselves at risk to say their message, no matter the form. Art, comics, videos, and everything else still fell under the protection of the Broker. They specialized in keeping everything physical and would then upload it to the Virtual, concealing the identities of those under their umbrella.

S'venia eventually accepted their services and thus began her new life as The Truth. She worked her life as S'venia as a journalist, and she kept writing the same fluff pieces about what the public idol was doing and what corporation was making strides to be better. Every story that cast a shadow over someone's character would make it back home. She would connect the dots, find the truth, and release her voice in full as The Truth to expose the hypocrisy. She has gained a small following in her corner in the virtual, her avatar being nothing more than a loudspeaker on top of an old newsstand with articles detailing the facts of the conversation. Everyone is free to stand and listen, and to grab a copy, whether they want to help the world to change, is up to them.

In today's heightened political tensions as the battle rages for the 'large' council seat, S'venia has been caught up in the coverage of the events. She has been careful to only report the positive sides of each candidate. The bad outway the good and The Truth shall be busy saying the quiet parts loud to the people. She is attempting to find an inroad to any campaign she can and hopes her job does the dirty work for her.

Operative Information

“If they can't tell The Truth from the average voice, do I even pose a threat?”

AUGMENTATIONS: (What sort of Cyberware are you equipped with? If in doubt, ask me.)

Engitech Eye-Spy Camera and video recording contact.

One of the few pieces of tech she has, the Eye-Spy is a clear contact lens that allows for high-quality photos and videos to be shot right from her perspective. The camera itself is very powerful and surprisingly cheap (with everyone rushing to get the newest implant, older style electronics have dropped in price), with the ability to shoot video at a 16k resolution and take photos at fifty mega-pixels for ultra-clear and easily edited photos. The camera is controlled by a few different methods. The first is a small physical shutter control device that she can covertly click when doing more covert research. The second is the control panel inserted on the side of her head (a requirement by the government). While it does little her voice can't, it still marks her with the markings of someone with a covert camera.

EQUIPMENT: (What are you carrying on the job?)

Engitech All-in-one computer -

The Engintech All-in-one model that S’venia uses is a few years old, yet she can't find it in her heart to replace it yet. It is sleek, and portable, as it merely looks like she wrapped some fabric across the latter half of her forearm. When she wants to use the device, she simply unwraps it, and it extends inwards for her to use with her free hand. She mainly uses the device for editing but may take a note or two.

Engitech ESCP-101 "Carrier of Justice" -

The SCP-101 is a simple, 9mm pistol that is both compact and lightweight in designs. ESCP-101 is billed as the “everyday” type of weapon, meant to go with you and be hidden unless drawn. It has a brown handle and metal finish. It is not the low-end pistol offered by Engitech, nor is it the highest end. Her family purchased it for her when she accepted the job with News Station 117 as they were worried about the worse neighborhood. S’venia goes to the range at least once a week to keep sharp. Her jackets have an “Ever-Secure holster” added on the inner left side of her jackets. The holster bonds with the material of the coat, and the company bills the holster as a “fast, secure, and hidden” way of holstering your weapon. S'venia has it holstered in a way that she can toggle safety and fire from the pocket of her jacket. The holder itself is easy to remove and rebond onto other areas.

Engitech Eye in the Sky drone –

A small, round, dimple laden drone that offers a wide-angle lens on its camera that delivers crisp and clear video and still shots. S’venia managed to snag this beast off the “secondary market” for well below its retail value about a year ago and it has become a staple of her interviews, as well as her normal life. Boasting a flight time of four hours, one hour if you take videos, the Eye in the Sky is always on the deck for S’venia when she needs it. The Eye in the Sky also features a current generation repulsorlift technology that is both silent and efficient. S’venia often uses it on her walks to and from her apartment to be the eyes in the back of her head. The done comes programmed with a track and follow mode, live streaming the feed to the special glasses that were included in the purchase. Furthermore, the camera and drone controls can be used through the Engitech Eye-Spy camera lens that she wears already. Directional control is either achieved through voice commands, or with the special glove that was, again, included with purchase.
The Drone itself weighs in at around twenty-five pounds and has a metallic finish.

Engitech R-01010010 "Gun Drone" -

S'venia has "acquired" these drones through her travels of the outskirts of the district. Oftentimes these were broken and discarded by the corporations after a battle was waged. What is broken can be fixed, if you know the right gal. They feature a more powerful repulsorlift that has a quick spin up and higher operating speed. They come equipped with a 5.56x45mm rapid-firing gun with an ammo capacity of fifty rounds. They are designed to be a part of a swarm that is used to overwhelm positions. Usually controlled by a Engitech technician that manages the flock as a whole, S'venia was able to get the 2 she has slaved to work with her software. She can use her hand and voice commands to make them move, but they are not as accurate when commanded this way. She mainly uses them as a deterrent and would instead not test their full combat capabilities.

SKILLS: (Feel free to list a few and elaborate a bit.)

Social butterfly - S'venia, though her life and experience, found it easy to relate to everyone. Whether it's the war-torn gangster, to the corporate scum, S'venia has enough experience to talk from someplace of expertise and to develop personal connections with most. This is something that has allowed her to foster a strong base of friends who all can be relied upon for various purposes.

Strong Voice - S'venia always has some power behind her words, whether written or spoken.

Conviction - S'venia is rooted in her beliefs, and very little can sway her from them. If she accepts a task, she will see it through for better or worse.

Journalistic intuition - S'venia knows where a story is and when there is nothing more than noise. She can filter through her various contacts and find a way to connect the dots through a complex series of events. This intuition is also used in everyday instances as well.

Tech Savant - While not a creator, S'venia can use her tech to significant effect. She uses her camera drones to act as her eyes and can edit in real-time on her devices. She has also adapted her camera drone controls to be used as an interface for the gun drones as well. She is also very handy at picking up new tech and figuring out how they work.

Street knowledge - While not terribly smart in the traditionally thought of street knowledge, her memory and traveling of the less beaten path have allowed her to remember how to navigate the streets of the district without having to use other tools. She knows many routes to the same place, some faster than others, while others are easy to lose someone in the crowds.

FLAWS: (Aim for three or so. Equal or greater to your number of skills.)

Conviction - S'venia is rooted in her beliefs, and very little can sway her from them. If she accepts a task, she will see it through for better or worse.

Reliant on tech - S'venia, while not augmented, is consumed by having the most up to date tech. From her drones to her software, a lot of what makes S'venia work as a journalist and overall is based in tech. As such, she has a relatively stable footprint in the Virtual.

Nosey - Something there is just something about what someone else is doing. From the way they carry themself to the way they are dressed. S'venia is often observing the world around her and the people within. This is not just to find her next jacket, it is a crucial part to stumble upon stories that her contacts could not. She has found unfavorable characters doing things in the shadows. While she never publishes what she sees, she still has some ammo to spare when it comes to spreading the Truth

Grandiose - S'venia lives life like she is the most important person in it. She has her vision. If someone is expendable along the way to achieve it, S'venia feels the temptation to do what is needed to get through with her goals.

Lust for power - S'venia alone does not know how far she will take her vision, but she still wants the power that uniting the people can bring. She wants nothing more to see her vision to fruition. Part of this was drilled into her following the losses she's faced. The feeling of not being able to do anything made her yearn for the power to do.

Need for control - From managing collaborations with her coworkers to her stores as The Truth, the need for control is an ever-present desire.

NOTES:

Relationship Table

Character Name	Relationship
Delilah Amano	Delilah and I go back a little. We worked on Dex's campaign together and, while not close, I know she suffered the most from the fallout. We didn't talk much about what happened, but to no surprise, we were never that close. I have kept in contact with her after we all split. Her skills are not only impressive, but they are also downright scary. Who else can slave a gun drone to a camera drone command? Nobody but Deli. Don't tell her I call her that, by the way. That being said, I once made a fact made known. My secret. THE secret. Who I am under the mask of myself. It was the day of the debate after I found her unresponsive in the campaign suite. They managed to bring her back but she was content on going on the slab all the same. I said the same thing there as I said on the ground, save someone S'vei, someone ANYONE, and I joined her for some drinks to dissuade her. I thought I knew the definition of "some drinks". Well, we were a few hours in and feeling pretty good but someone had to bring something up. Her secret. THE secret. Who she is under the mask of herself. She did not take it so well. In lieu of the day we've both had, in the fact that she was technically dead at one point, I let her know that I too had a secret. I let her know her secret was safe. I still remember waking up the next day thinking it was just a dream. That was until I got a kind worded response back that broke my world. We don't meet much in the real, but if I get a visit from her as she runs through the lab or if I send off a message, we at least keep in touch.
Dexter Campbell	I don't know what happened to you. All I know is I feel like there is a story to tell of what happened, I hope to one day share it.
Serena Petrukov	There is something about this woman and I can not figure what I don't like. We should be best friends right now. From her platform to her decision to be so public with her message, these alone on anybody else would mean I would have her followed and be staying awake waiting for her next message. I learned of her too late I think. I've heard of her through friends and acquaintances, sure, but I never heard her message until after she started running. The more I looked at her the more I approved. Regulations to protect speech? Eradication of the corrupt? Sign S'venia up. Yet the more she looked at the campaign itself the more she questioned Serena's true motives. The lack of transparency involved with just who is backing her, who is funding it, and what are their goals? What influence do they have over her?"

[Opposition]

@Valor
Your edits look good. I like the elaboration on the backstory. That will give me a lot more to work with in regards to the recurrence of past motifs for your character. One more thing, would you mind giving an identity to the gang that Amelia ran with? You're welcome to give it as much detail as you'd like, but I can fill in gaps if necessary. We actually had a 'Knights Gang' in Futility 1, ironically enough. If you want, you could have worked with them or create your own faction.

@MagratheanWhale
Everything looks great. Glad to have S'venia back aboard for Futility 2. Can you elaborate specifically on S'venia's goings-on/transition from the Campbell's campaign team back into her neutral role with the Broker? This is going to be important for me with regards to her interactions with Delilah and Overdriver as the old lads come together. There will actually be a number of recurring characters, so S'venia's reactions to the fiasco and where she went from there in comparison to the other crew members will be rather important, I think. If you have questions about missing details about the event, feel free to ask on Discord.

---
I'll be working on relations for the two of you today, to be finished either today or tomorrow. Delilah will definitely have a relation with S'venia, but other than that, I'm up in the air regarding other options and will draft some stuff for you guys to look at.

[Squad 404]

Amelia "Glory" Batalia

G L O R Y
25 | Female | 6’2” | AB+

General Information

“I solemnly swear to devote my life and abilities...”

NAME: Amelia Batalia

ALIASES // TITLES: Glory. Chosen as part of an alias initiative to help protect the identity of security operators at Knight Enterprise.

SEX: Female

AGE: Twenty five.

APPEARANCE:

Image Reference

Amelia stands at a grand six feet and two inches tall, which is far above the normal average for females. This is one of the most obvious indicators that Amelia hit the genetic lottery. Amelia’s skin is a fair cream color, and is blemish free thanks to an intense self-care routine. Amelia’s short, bob cut hair is light brown and frequently a bit messy. Amelia’s eyes are green, and she was blessed with unerring 20/20 vision. However, her eyes typically appear pink due to the special contacts she wears on a regular basis.

Amelia’s overall body shape is toned and athletic, which is both mandated and maintained by her chosen career. Amelia’s bust is fairly generous, another example of how she hit the genetic lottery. For clothing, what Amelia wears depends on what she’s doing at the time, but the outfit she typically defaults to is a white shirt with a dark blue jacket with a yellow interior and yellow faux-fur collar lining. This dark blue jacket also has a layer of kevlar sewn into to provide Amelia with some additional protection. On the right shoulder of this jacket is a Knight Enterprise patch.

Amelia also keeps a pair of aviator style sunglasses propped up on her forehead, though she does have a case for them if needed. Amelia also has a pair of heavy-duty shooting gloves that she wears. The right glove is missing it’s index finger cover by design, and allows for the shooter to maintain all flexibility in their trigger finger so as to ensure maximum control and accuracy.

Amelia also wears a pair of denim hotpants with a brown leather belt. Hooked into this belt is a brown leather holster and tactical pouch combo. This holster is also bound to her right thigh by two additional straps and is supported by double band webbing wrapping around her waist. Amelia wears one stocking on her left leg, as when she tried wearing one on both legs it caused too many issues with the holster. Finally, Amelia wears a pair of heavy-duty work boots that have both steel-toe inserts and reinforced soles to give Amelia a firm grip on nearly any surface, even ones that are typically too slick for good contact.

OCCUPATION: Amelia’s current occupation is employment at a small security firm known as Knight Enterprise. They’re barely big enough to be on the map, but their overall lack of corruption and cheaper pricing means that they manage to score big contracts from time to time. Currently, Amelia is contracted out as general campaign security, meaning that she’s travelling to basically anywhere a speech or rally is being held to provide on-site security.

Psychological Profile

“For once in this business, my closet is clean.”

Honorable | Rigid | Reliable | By-the-Book | Punctual | Overzealous

PERSONAL GOAL: Amelia doesn’t really have a personal investment in the current election, but she is contracted out to provide security for the duration of it, so she is obligated to remain around and protect all speaking candidates, regardless of platform.

Outside of the campaign, Amelia has a desire to bust some of the members of the old gangs she fell in with. Most of the people there, at least as far as Amelia remembers, were just lost kids that couldn't get a job. However, high up on the ladder were some genuinely bad people, and Amelia wants to do her best to see them behind bars.

CAMPAIGN GOAL: Amelia wants to see the world improved and personally views The Central Party as the best party to do that, but doesn't support Joshua Gatch due to the fact that unemployment rose while he was mayor. Unfortunately, nobody else has garnered the support of the central party and Amelia has been left politically hamstrung because of it. Interestingly, despite her overall favoring of the central party's ideals, Amelia privately favors Chen Dao due to his outreach towards less-advantaged people with his augmentation monasteries.

However, Amelia is still publicly neutral and doesn't openly advocate for any one candidate as part of her security contract.

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY: Amelia is a moral and upstanding person that generally doesn’t deal under the table. Unlike some of the stories that come out of The Enforcers, Amelia doesn’t take bribes and doesn’t like to deviate from standing orders unless it’s proven to be absolutely necessary. She also doesn’t like to gossip while on the job, and remembers that company secrets are, in fact, company secrets and not something to disclose on a regular basis.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: Amelia’s political life is rather uninteresting, but she does generally support The Central Party since she views it as the least problematic of all the parties. She knows that it’s not perfect, but she likes the fact that it doesn’t seem to have an agenda that actively forces people to change their lifestyle. She doesn’t exactly approve of The Central Parties dealings with some of the more extreme megacorporations, but tells herself that hopefully, in the end, the government will “wash its hands” when the time comes.

SECRETS: When Amelia was a teen, she used to fall in with street gangs and various muscle groups because she grew up in a poorer area and it was difficult to find sustainable work. She didn’t quite do anything illegal herself, but the mere involvement with some of them would be grounds for a thorough interrogation, especially since Amelia now works in private security.

FEARS: Amelia’s greatest fear is losing her job in security, since it’s been one of the most stable jobs that she’s ever had and she had to work incredibly hard to earn the position. Aside from that, she does have the general fear that she’ll be caught up in a firefight and have her life ended by a single lucky shot, though she tries to remind herself that this is the risk she accepted when she chose to work in the field of security.

REPUTATION: How the world views Amelia is generally dependent on their own moral standing. People who like to operate lawfully generally consider Amelia to be a likable person that is an easy hire for most situations. Those who like to get their hands dirty typically try to avoid hiring Amelia, as her upstanding nature will typically cause them a headache since she’ll typically be at odds with their disregard for protocol.

LIKES:

List

Practicing her shooting.
Exercising.
Taking long showers.
Nice food, particularly burgers.
Sweets, in particular pocky.

DISLIKES:

List

Insects, especially insects in her apartment.
Having people in her personal space for longer than a minute.
Sour foods.
Having food expire.
Being covered in filth.

QUIRKS:

List.

Amelia carries around an excessive amount of ammo for her gun.

Amelia’s favorite phrase is “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it”, which helps to explain why she carries so much ammo.

Amelia still has a teddy bear from when she was young. Thanks to modern materials it’s still durable, but Amelia likes to keep it hidden.

Amelia snores a little, but denies it.

Surprisingly, Amelia’s genetics are rather compatible with cybertechnology. If she were to get augmented, her body would take to it well.

Background Information

”The future is shaped by the past, but with enough defiance you can shrug off a bad start to something.”

Amelia’s background is fairly standard for someone growing up below the poverty line in the modern era. Her parents were poor, and thus she was also poor. Luckily for Amelia, she did have the advantage of winning the genetic lottery. Her physical capabilities, being above average, allowed her to excel in rapidly growing job fields like security. Since she didn’t have the money for a gym membership, Amelia honed her body by running and jumping around the slums of the reclaim zone that she grew up in, effectively teaching herself parkour as she went.

However, Amelia didn’t get into a security firm right away. They simply weren’t looking for new hires in her area, and so Amelia fell in with some local gangs and muscle groups. Amelia was kept rather low tier in the gangs, partially because she wasn't very good at actually delivering threats to people, and partially because the people in power wanted to keep as many people as downtrodden as possible in order to stay in power. However, Amelia's life with the gangs was shattered when she was told to intimidate a shopkeeper for protection money on her own. She was given a screwdriver and told to put it through their kneecap should they not have the money. Amelia bounced along happily, as this was just normal business to her and people usually coughed the money up pretty quickly. She was also eager to "prove herself" after having been near the bottom of the ladder for months.

When Amelia arrived at the shop, she picked the lock on the back door and snuck inside. There she found the owner, and her worldview shattered. The owner was old and withered, confined to a wheelchair with his legs mangled beyond repair. He glared at Amelia angrily before beginning to shout at her. "Oh, here to 'collect' again, are you?! Huh, punk?!" He began to wheel himself towards Amelia aggressively, and Amelia turned and ran, dropping the screwdriver as she went.

Confronted with the harsh reality of her gang work, Amelia's view shattered. She never went back to the "hub house" to report what had happened. She instead ducked into a random bar to hide. The gangs never really bothered with the bars, mainly because they were one of the few places in the slums that made enough money to afford security. Luckily for Amelia, there was a recruiting officer there that night. With nowhere else to go, Amelia begged for a job. Thankfully, he said yes.

Amelia's former comrades in crime never heard from her in person again, but a few news reports featuring her have riled them up. They're furious that she's "gone legit" and abandoned their operation. However, thanks to the alias initiative that Knight Enterprise put in place, they know little about her current whereabouts, and even then only a few remember her. However, those few have become powerful people within the gangs and might become a thorn in Amelia's side should they learn where she's working.

Amelia has been working for Knight Enterprise since she was twenty three, and was only recently assigned to the campaign trail after a college of hers developed a really nasty case of shingles and had to be submitted to a local hospital for treatment. Knight Enterprise was never one to leave a contract short staffed, and so Amelia was dispatched to fill in the gap.

Operative Information

“This is Glory, go ahead.”

AUGMENTATIONS: None currently.

EQUIPMENT:

Amelia’s equipment

Amelia’s gun: FuryTech “Grizzly” .50 AE handgun.

Image Reference

Grizzly is Amelia’s handgun and weapon of choice for security detail. It’s chambered for the beastly .50 Action Express cartridge, and holds seven rounds total per magazine. Amelia has chosen to specialize in this large caliber specifically because of the growing influence of dermal implant armor combined with standard body armor.

Amelia has also had her Grizzly modified with what is known as a “Smartgun System” that feeds weapon data to a pair of synced Augmented Reality (AR) supporting devices, be these cybereyes, glasses, goggles, or contacts lenses. Amelia’s smartgun features are slightly inferior compared to other smartguns because she uses a pair of contact lenses to sync up with her gun instead of the widely accepted cybereye implant. The most obvious aspect of the smartgun system is the camera it uses to gather information to feed its various assisting tools. On Amelia’s gun in specific, the recoil spring plug was replaced with a camera. Since this is in a very active part of the gun, the camera has specifically been heavily reinforced and all optional hardening upgrades have been added to it. Including the lens being made out of ballistic-rated materials that are virtually impossible to damage indirectly. So, essentially, Amelia doesn’t have to worry about the camera lens getting scratched up and her smartgun feeding her incorrect information, or that the recoil of her gun will break the internal parts of the camera.

In combat, Amelia’s smartgun features the following information displayed in a HUD or floating around the weapon depending on circumstance:

Distance to target.
Remaining ammunition.
Trajectory projection laser to assist with aiming. (Visible exclusively to Amelia’s AR contacts.)
Bullet drop/sway calculation, with the trajectory projection laser adjusted accordingly.
If the gun has the safety engaged or not.

When Amelia engaged maintenance mode on the smartgun system it instead gives her a different display of more technical data that can be used to check if the gun needs repairs, this includes information like heat buildup in the gun, material stress, and part wear. It also keeps track of the time between maintenance sessions and warns Amelia when the gun needs a routine disassembly and cleaning.

Amelia typically keeps one magazine loaded in her gun with a round in the chamber and the safety on, and carries no less than six additional magazines in her tactical pouches.

FuryTech “Smart” Contacts.

These contacts are what house the smartlink technology that’s linked to Amelia’s gun, as well as augmented reality (AR) technology. As a way of differentiating them from regular contacts, they’re colored pink. When worn, they color correct to eliminate the pink hue and then provide an unobstructive AR HUD. Features of this hud include:

Time.
Weather alerts.
Location of smartgun linked weapons.
Smartgun smartlink.
Light and glare correction.
GPS.

Sunglasses: Amelia’s aviator sunglasses aren’t anything special. She just likes wearing them for when it’s too bright for the smart contacts to correct entirely.

Handcuffs: Amelia has two pairs of well-made handcuffs should someone need serious detaining.

Radio: Amelia has a high end handheld transceiver, and it includes an earpiece for when Amelia needs her hands free.

Cellphone: Amelia carries a flip-phone styled cellphone. It lacks some of the functions of a more modern design, but since Amelia’s work-mandated programs can either use AR or don’t mandate a touchscreen, Amelia is able to get away with the older form factor.

SKILLS:

Marksmanship: Amelia is a good shot with her pistol, and can even manage good long-range shots due to the great power retention over distance that the powerful .50 AE rounds provide.

Close Combat Training: Given that Amelia’s primary weapon is a pistol, she’s also opted to train herself in hand to hand combat for defense in the event that someone manages to rush her at a bad moment. In specific, she’s been trained in a mix of boxing and wrestling.

Attention to detail: Amelia’s security training involved picking out minute differences between setups and paying careful attention to security cameras, and as such she’s capable of spotting small differences that would indicate something has been tampered with, and she’s good at watching a dozen security screens at once for suspicious activity.

Athletics: Amelia doesn’t skimp on her personal fitness, and has gotten some more official training on parkour ever since she joined Knight Enterprise. Amelia’s stamina allows her to run for approximately forty minutes without stopping.

FLAWS:

“Protocol dictates…”: Amelia is extremely strict about protocol. This is a bit of a double edged sword in that while it makes her look good to her superiors, it means that it also takes her a long time to accomplish some things that could be accomplished much quicker by some others. As an example: sending all evidence off for testing and letting the “thinkers” at Knight Enterprise get it correct instead of risking getting something wrong. Meanwhile, the person responsible has already managed to get out of the scene and is well on their way to a safehouse.

Structurally dependant: Amelia is highly dependant on having a good chain of command, clear orders, and consistent communication with the other members of the security detail. Should she be forced to improvise without any kind of commanding officer, her ability to effectively respond to a situation will be extensively hindered.

Rigidity: Amelia has been given extensive scenario training, and unfortunately it’s been effective at drilling specific situations into her without room for adaptation. Amelia will frequently be quick to come up with a plan, but her plans are almost always the same and simple pattern recognition will allow people to interpret what she’ll do next with ease.

Overzealousness: Amelia is frequently keen to see something through to completion, even if it’s something small that really doesn’t need to be figured out. Thus, her time is easily consumed by menial work, like filling out situation reports. When Amelia dedicates herself to a task she works until it’s done, frequently at the expense of getting anything else done.

NOTES:

Amelia’s personal vehicle is an Engitech Mirage motorcycle.

Knight Enterprise is a medium-level security agency that has the resources to branch out an open another office in another megaregion. However, due to a lack of locations to expand to without serious competition in a rapidly saturating market, Knight Enterprise has decided to keep it's strength collected in the reclaim zone.

The gangs and muscle groups the Amelia used to be a part of have, in the years that she's been away from them, fused into a collective known as the "Reavers of the Lost and the Damned." On the surface, they frequently tout that they provide opportunities for people who aren't taken in by places like Knight Enterprise and other growing job markets, but within the group there exists a "high table" of extremely influential people that use The Reavers as their personal army. Unfortunately, a few of the people who still hold a grudge against Amelia for leaving them and joining Knight Enterprise have seats at the high table. Latest reports put the number of associates at about one-hundred.

Amelia’s relations with others.

Character name	Relationship
The Flux Shaman	”Them? Uh… To be honest, I only know what we’ve got on file about them, and to be even more honest their file is about as large as a kitchen napkin. Seriously, it’s like three paragraphs. They’ve hit the Knight Enterprise servers a few times, probably doing some kind of job, but outside of that I don’t really do too much computer stuff. The tech guys groan every time they find any evidence that they’ve been around, though.”
Stella Solomon	”Stella’s a pretty nice bartender. I’ve seen her a few times, and her drinks are top-notch. She sure does like her gossip though, and I’ve also heard of a few idiots getting chewed out the next morning for being a little too friendly with Stella from time to time. Put a few glasses of hard liquor in them and they like to forget that complaining about the “massive amount of patrol duty” they’re doing is a company secret.”
Citizen K	”Citizen K… You know how I said that The Flux Shaman’s file is a napkin big? Well, Citizen K is a bit bigger than that, but it’s all filled with hearsay. We know that they were involved in a mixed bag of gang activity and black-hat cybercrime, but at the same time we have nothing that we can actually pin on them. So Citizen K’s file fits on two napkins. Not one.”
Johnny Lovecraft	”Okay, so this one doesn’t fit on a napkin. And we get a name that sounds like it belongs to a human! Johnny here is your pretty standard modern merc: Little regard for the law, no goals outside of more money and more power, and previously a part of the scrapteam. The main concern is that someone beat out Gatch on hiring him. At the very least, he isn’t augmented. Can you imagine the amount of hell someone could raise with ambitions like that if they were augmented? Nasty stuff.”
Lott Ramana	”Who? … Oh! Her! Green earrings! Yes I remember now. She seems pretty nice, and she appears to know Stella pretty well. I haven’t had the chance to interact with her too much but I don’t think that I’d have anything to dislike about her. ...Well, maybe one thing. Her karaoke could… Use just a little bit of work. Just a little! Okay, maybe more than a little… But it’s workable!”

Updated, revised, and re-revised. Now with relations!