J O N D U R A N D
⟁ 27 ⟁ Male ⟁ 6’1” ⟁ A+
Even at first glance, it’s obvious Jon is more machine than man. His limbs have been replaced at the shoulders and upper thighs with sleek black cyber-limbs that he makes no attempt to hide. Above the ribs, his torso has likewise been replaced with smooth, faintly whirring black metal, though he generally has the social graces to cover that up either with a suit of body armor or a shirt and jacket if he’s not working. He appears to be tall and powerfully built, though how much of that is him and how much is the augments is difficult to say, and he usually wears a black helmet with full face-coverage and a dimly glowing visor when he’s on the job.
Beneath that helmet, his skin is tanned and coarse. His augmented eyes are sharp and mechanical, constantly flitting about, focusing and refocusing in a way that makes it difficult to tell what he’s actually looking at. His brown hair is shaved on the sides of his head and cut short on top of it in a tuft, and he keeps his beard and mustached trimmed close. His features are almost feminine in an angular sort of way, his lips pouty and his cheekbones high. He generally dresses in a very utilitarian style, cargo pants and shirts and jackets, and is rarely ever seen without his black duffelbag of personal effects close at hand.
B A C K G R O U N D
Jon was born in the city of Lyon, France, in the year 2020, at the dawn of the nation’s new golden age. Western Europe had been among the regions most affected by the Exchange - a combination of national tensions, bread riots, border skirmishes and refugee crises had resulted in the collapse of most sovereign governments. Spain was a lawless ruin, Germany and Belgium a collection of warring states, the United Kingdom a starving puppet of Ireland. Of the once-great European powers, only France remained a strong and stable nation, thanks largely to the efforts of the Maginot Corporation, a PMC that rose to prominence and power by providing the most valuable of services, that which no government could supply: security. As Maginot forces returned order to France, pushed the invaders out of its borders and established peace in a chaotic time, the civilian government was forced to bend to the wishes not only of their saviors, but of their people – democracy had failed, and the modern corpratocracy was born.
Jon came of age in a nation ascendant. He was proud to be French – where others were splintered, they were divided. Where others were weak, they were strong. His parents were soldiers of Maginot, fighting for the prosperity and security of France in battlefields across the world, as Maginot had become the most prominent PMC on the globe. He and his younger sister Emily were educated in Maginot schools, taught from a young age to be strong, brave, and always loyal to Maginot Corp. He lived in decent circumstances, as his parents had distinguished themselves well in their service – and in Maginot’s employ, courage and skill were always rewarded with a generous holiday bonus. When he was sixteen and his public education was concluded, he enrolled in basic training to become a mercenary, just like all the other children. Jon was still in basic when his father caught a German bullet while on patrol in the Black Forest, but that was nothing special – practically everyone he knew had lost a parent or two on some foreign battlefield or another. It was a part of life.
After that, times got a little rougher. Maginot’s generous condolence package covered the family’s financial needs for a little while, as did Jon’s new career as a mercenary, but with once source of income gone and their mother rapidly reaching the age of mandatory retirement, Jon and his sister began to struggle to make ends meet. Not helping the matter were Emily’s student loans, of course; she had shown a brilliant mind for engineering and was studying at a university in Paris in the hopes of a lucrative career in Maginot R&D, but the cost of the education was astronomic, and the family quite simply wasn’t making enough to cover it.
That was about when the nightmares started, of course. Jon was halfway through his first contract of duty in Germany, and nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. It was one thing to learn how to fight, another to kill a stranger from thirty yards away, to burn down a rebelling village, to hold your comrade in your arms as his life bled out his neck. He was so close to his home, and yet he was in another world, a place of death and chaos and madness. When the offer came to get away from it all, it is no wonder he jumped at it.
It came when he was on leave in Verdun – a pretty young woman with a Maginot badge came and sat across from him at a café. She told him that he qualified for the program because he was one of the best, and that may well have been true – even among Maginot’s elite forces, Jon had distinguished himself for his prowess, an accomplishment that brought him more shame than pride. She called it Project Diana, a new step forward in experimental combat cybernetics that would shape the twenty-something candidates into peerless warriors. He would be among the greatest Maginot warriors to ever live – and of course, the fact that his salary would be almost tripled if he went through with it was a bonus. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse, and one month of preparation later, he and the nineteen other candidates he’d by then come to know went under the knife.
The project was a disaster. The augmentations were powerful, yes, but nobody had told them about the side effects. The neural augs brought too much strain on the human nervous system, resulting in psychosis, hallucinations, and often fatal seizures. Those few who survived, Jon among them, were abandoned – they were a failed science experiment, a lesson in how far the human body could be pushed. Unemployed and unable to work or even really to function, Jon became another financial burden to his family, with his mother as his full-time caretaker. Nobody would even try to treat him – all the hospitals in France were run by Maginot, and company policy was to deny the existence of Project Diana. Officially, he was just another burnt-out soldier who had invested in shoddy augmentations and paid the price for it, another good lesson in why you should always buy Official Maginot Products. Jon spent a few months screaming at shadows, trembling and punching holes in the wall, as his family slid further and further into debt.
Finally, after a lot of research and a few deals with some very shady people, Emily found a solution. An experimental seizure medication from a GFEZ biotech company could be used, in regular doses, to suppress the symptoms of augmentation rejection, and though the pills were very expensive, she managed to secure him a supply. His capacity to work restored, Jon saw no luck in getting his old position at Maginot back; with the company’s new Artemis-Class Augments going into production, there was no need for the company to take the risk on the prototype model, and the more questions he asked his old superiors the more he was met with coldness and often hostility. It was when he learned that the family home had come under 24/7 surveillance by unmarked vans – the kind used to monitor potential ‘threats to the state’ – that he resolved to get out while the getting was good. Maginot may have had a stranglehold on the private military market, but there were always people in the world looking to pay good money for hired muscle, and there was no shortage of jobs Maginot wouldn’t take. He hopped on the first plane to the GFEZ he could, promising to send money home.
He’s lived as a mercenary and private security specialist in the GFEZ ever since, working as a hired thug or bodyguard for whatever two-bit crime boss was willing to pay top-dollar for an augmented attack dog. Try as he might, he could never seem to save anything – all the money he earned went to cover the cost of his medication or was sent home to help keep the family afloat in the face of their limitless debt. That’s why he was in no position to ignore the Loingsech offer when it came to him – the half payment on acceptance was enough to seal the deal on its own, since he was strapped for cash and his meds would need a resupply by the end of the week. Sure, it was bad news, but the money they were offering would go a long way towards digging his family out from the mound of crap they’d been buried in since his father’s debt – there was no way he could refuse that.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Cynical. Sarcastic. Disillusioned. Alienated. All of these words could be used to describe him, a man who was raised to love his country and his employer with all his heart, only to be betrayed by it. He projects a veneer of cold bitterness and world-weary realism, convinced that everything will be a disaster, that everyone will betray him. He’s haunted by the violence he has inflicted, but he would never show it to anyone or admit to any crack in his armor of sarcasm. Family is the most important thing in his life – he would do anything to protect his mother and sister and to help them lead the prosperous life they deserve, feelings that were only enhanced by his guilt at the time he spent as a medical liability to the both of them. Deep down, he has the soul of a moral philosopher buried under all the metal and electronics – it’s said that within every cynic lives a betrayed idealist, and Jon is living proof of that. Deep down, he wonders if he still qualifies as a human after his augments, if a person can have a soul with artificial eyes and limbs and organs, but it's not a question he likes to ponder very much.
On the job, he’s all business, always looking to take the quickest and often the most brutal route to achieving any objective. He may regret that his is a life of violence, but at the same time he’s never been one to split hairs trying to find a peaceful solution to his problems – if the job requires him to snap a neck, he’ll snap it without a moment’s hesitation. He can be a bit abrasive about his instructions when it comes to security matters; he’s convinced that he knows best about how to keep everyone alive and will not hesitate to express that. There’s a definite trace of arrogance in the way he insists on his own skills and expertise, but he’s also quite prepared to acknowledge the capabilities of others if they prove themselves to him – he’ll cut dead weight without the slightest hesitation, but win his respect and he’ll make for a valuable, if endlessly sarcastic, ally.
S K I L L S
Jon is a soldier, through and through. Maginot taught him how to fight and how to kill, and he’s proficient in squad tactics, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of most firearms, though he prefers submachine guns or automatic rifles. But of course, Maginot employees aren’t just mercenaries, but also private security, meaning that he also has a good bit of experience in securing and protecting high-value targets, and his primary role on this upcoming job is actually as a security specialist for the trip. He speaks French, English and Mandarin, with a choppy command of German communication from his time on contract there.
In combat, he relies on speed and aggression above all, proactively savaging threats at close range and moving too fast for enemies to get a bead on him. He’s a decent leader, a skill that is impeded by his habitual abrasiveness, and has a working knowledge of stealth-tactics and special ops maneuvers (though he’s not that good into putting them into practice anymore, which he’ll blame on the fact that his footsteps clank more than they used to).
E Q U I P M E N T
Two SMGs of Russian manufacture, a steel combat knife, a 12-shot pilot’s sidearm, and a Maginot-made sniper rifle make up his weapons collection, which he usually transports in a black duffelbag. He’s also got his helmet and body armor, both made of black carbon-plate which, while low on bells and whistles, he purchased in the hopes that they would help his image as a cyber-merc and allow him to drive his prices up. He also keeps on him a white bottle of pills with enough doses for a month and a half at two pills a day, a crumpled picture of his mother and sister, another crumpled picture of him in full Maginot uniform before receiving his augs, a set of travel chess that’s missing two pawns and a copy of ‘Waiting for Godot’ in the original French.
A U G M E N T A T I O N S
Diana-Class Neural Augment: The centerpiece of the experimental Artemis rig, the part that separated the project from being just another augment development and made it a true super-soldier program. The Neural Augment functions as a complete rewiring of the nervous system, allowing for effective adrenaline circulation around the body and providing beyond-human reflexes that truly leverage the enhanced agility of the suite’s other augmentations. At maximum efficiency in stressful situations, it allows the subject to see the world around them in ‘slow motion’, rendering them capable of dodging non-automatic small arms fire or of managing several opponents at once in close range. It also provides an AR uplink and an optional setting allowing the user to manually dampen their pain receptors, (though it’s recommended to never go below 50%, lest the user accidentally tear themselves in half without realizing). Of course, all this neo-tech comes at the expense of some nasty side-effects, including migraines, nausea, insomnia, hallucination, psychosis, and seizures. The symptoms can be suppressed with frequent medication, but there is no known cure.
Diana-Class Arm Augments: Two black carbon fiber cyber-limbs capable of immense feats of strength and agility. With them, the user can lift a grown man over their head, tear a car door off its hinges or fire an automatic weapon one-handed. The right arm has a foot-long blade stowed in the wrist that can be triggered to emerge with a thought, though the release mechanism is a little sticky.
Diana-Class Leg Augments: Similar to the above, two limb augments that allow for a top sprinting speed of 40 mph, as well as massively increased strength and agility.
Diana-Class Torso Augment: Really just an extension of the Neural Augment, most of the Artemis subject’s upper torso has been replaced with an augmented containing the necessary spinal and chemical wiring for the Neural Augment to function, with mechanical replacements of the heart, lungs, and several other assorted organisms to maximize cardio efficiency to the point where the other augs are usable. This does have the bonus of meaning the subject’s upper torso is made of carbon-fiber and therefore highly resistant to blunt impacts and gunfire, however.
Diana-Class Eye Augments: Finally, the replacement cyber-eyes allow for target isolation and readouts in AR-space, as well as enhancing visibility in low-light conditions. That being said, they have a limited ability to separate friend from foe, resulting in frequent target popups and vitals readouts in everyday social interaction; this may or may not have a deteriorative effect on the subject’s mental health.
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