Ghosthands

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

The thugs' hasty retreat took them right past Jek's position at the Dive's doorway, and the salarian watched them flee with mild amusement as he stepped out from cover, then entered the bar. As he approached Roman he hoisted his Indra over his right shoulder, and with a whirring of micro-servos the rifle folded up into a compact oblong and clipped onto its hardpoint. He left his sentry turret hovering near the doorway, just in case.

"It's Mr Thornton, isn't it?" Jek asked (though it was more of a statement: the salarian seemed quite sure of his own knowledge). "Your reputation precedes you."

He glanced down at the man Roman had captured, and gave his omni-tool a few taps until a it projected a medical scan holo-readout above it.

"Hm. He's losing quite a bit of blood," he observed. "I'm sure you're eager to interrogate him, but I'd better seal the wound first, or you'll have a corpse instead of a captive."

The salarian dropped to one knee to apply a dose of Medi-Gel.

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

Looking forward to it!

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

"Pays to be prepared, quarian," Jek retorted, moving into position to the right of the bar's doorway and using this cover to peer inside. Finding themselves flanked between the mercs in front and the turret and sniper behind, several of the thugs had scrambled for cover. A handful of them, mostly with intact shields, were bunched up like sardines behind a particularly solid bench.

"Speaking of being prepared," Jek remarked to Tasi as his visor highlighted the grunts and the respective levels of their kinetic barriers, "you're in luck."

The salarian unclipped one of three grenades from a small bandolier on his right arm and lobbed it. Electricity crackled across its surface as it sailed through the air.

It struck the top of the thugs' cover, where it exploded in a brilliant blue-white flash. The eponymous arcs of the EMP burst shot out from the point of impact like jagged fingers of lightning, stripping shields where they met them and electrocuting where they didn't.

"The Arc Grenade is a beautiful thing."

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

@baskets Looking forward to it :)

@Vilhelm Haha, easily done XD

@Heat, shall I wait for you to post as the thugs (and Roman) before I have Jek respond to Tasi?

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

@VilhelmGo for it! I think everybody else has either already posted or said they're busy at the moment.

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

The sniper rifle-toting thug suddenly got a taste of his own medicine: a flurry of sniper shots struck him from behind. They ripped through his shields in moments, and continued their relentless onslaught until muzzle climb brought their trajectory up to a final headshot. The grunt dropped with more holes in him than a hanar's t-shirt.

A little way down the street, a salarian raised his eye from the scope of an M-90 Indra with a 'boom, headshot' kind of smile.

"Sorry I'm late," came Jek's voice over the mercenaries' comm channel. "Took the liberty of patching myself in."

Tossing a small metal object through the doorway of Hergon's Dive, he glanced up at where Tasi was perched on the roof and gave the quarian a mild smirk.

"Your encryption's a little light."

As he spoke the grenade-like object revealed itself to be a compact sentry turret, deploying behind the black-clad attackers and immediately opening fire.

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

I finished Jek's art!

Jek Laeron

Full-size image

I'll try and get an IC written soon.

EDIT: IC is up.

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

I'll let you decide what power rank you want with the powers, all the characters are supposed to be top of the line at what they do so it stands to reason that they are very capable with their own powers.

@Heat

Fantastic, thanks very much.

Jek IC coming soon, and I've almost finished his character art.

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

A quick question about powers: how much specialisation can we have in our powers at this point? Can Jek's sentry turret, for example, have a rocket launcher attachment (as seen in the power's Rank 6 in ME3)? If not, will our powers improve as we progress through the story?

Mass Effect: Omega's Finest

Name
Jek Laeron

Age
24

Species
Salarian

Gender
Male

Appearance

Jek Laeron

Full-size image

Jek is of the slender, wiry build typical of salarians. His skin is a greenish-grey, and dotted with darker scales around the chin, forehead and cranial horns. His large dark eyes have a sharp-witted gleam.

Occupation
Freelance hacker/saboteur

Class
Engineer

Powers
- Sentry Turret
- Sabotage
- Incinerate
- Snap Freeze
- Arc Grenade
- Drill Ammo

Weapons
- M-90 Indra Sniper Rifle
- M-5 Phalanx Heavy Pistol (with laser scope as in ME2)
Both weapons are modified with Ultralight Materials in order to minimise weight.

Armor/Apparel
Jek makes use of Jormangund Technology's Crisis Armour (salarian form factor), giving him protection from a variety of hostile environments. As a salarian, he is rather fragile, and his kinetic barriers can only compensate so much.
The modified Archon holo-visor he wears is an excellent asset to a tech expert such as himself: it links to his omni-tools to project a variety of useful readouts and HUDs for almost any situation.
Casual wear: a simple salarian jumpsuit.

Equipment
- Dual Savant omni-tools
- 3x grenades
- Medi-gel
- Omni-gel (mainly sentimental value)

Personality
Jek Laeron is a perfect example of the salarian gearhead. A consummate tech specialist, he has encyclopaedic knowledge of an impressive array of technologies: besides being your go-to guy for a hack or bypass, his rigorous STG training and natural talent make him adept at repairing systems (or the opposite), modifying equipment, rigging explosives, piloting vehicles…

Among those he has worked with, Jek is known for his dry and acerbic wit. In most conversations, his particular brands of sarcasm and cynicism quickly make themselves known. This often grates with those around him, but he makes up for it with an unflappability and level-headedness that allow him to remain cool in even the most heated of situations. Jek considers himself very much a professional, and doesn’t hesitate to remark on this quality (or the lack thereof) in others.

Jek’s morality is somewhat hazy. He will kill in cold blood, and has a disregard for law or authority (especially when they get in the way), but he does operate to his own code and disapproves of excessive cruelty or violence. He is not a greedy man (unless rare tech is involved) and a job’s pay doesn’t matter much to him: he’s in it for the challenge.

He talks in the clipped tones common among salarians, occasionally dropping pronouns or articles in the manner famously exemplified by Mordin Solus.

Bio
Showing promise from a young age, Jek was enrolled in the salarian military, where his talents got him assigned to the Special Tasks Group. He graduated second-best of his class from the STG Academy (top place was claimed by a certain Corporal Kirrahe) and his skills were quickly put to work in the field.

Jek’s last mission for the Group was an operation against a hacking collective who had been disrupting an influential dalatrass’ financial transactions. His team was dispatched to locate and neutralise their base of operations. They were successful, but during the latter stages of the mission Jek discovered several surprising files on the hackers’ mainframe. These files proved that the very dalatrass who had ordered the operation had been using a backdoor to funnel considerable sums of credits out of various government funds, including welfare and the military, into her personal accounts. Before he could copy the files, his oblivious teammates wiped the databases (as per their orders from, of course, the dalatrass), destroying all proof of her corruption.

When Jek’s appeals to have the dalatrass investigated fell on deaf ears, he took matters into his own hands and exploited the same backdoor to drain every last credit from the dalatrass’ accounts, returning the stolen funds to the government and donating the rest to a slew of charities. The dalatrass was unsurprisingly furious, and even Jek’s hacking skills weren’t enough to remove all traces of his ‘theft’: he was caught and court-martialled.

Stripped of his rank and dishonourably discharged, Jek left Citadel space for the Terminus Systems, angry and disillusioned with authority. At first he tried to find work as a hacker-for-hire on Illium, but the dalatrass had contacts there and he was soon driven off-world.

He wound up on Omega, where he found his skills to be quite welcome (at least, as welcome as anything is on Omega). Jek found that the kind of work available on the lawless station actually suited him far better than the banality of white-collar crime: he enjoyed the danger, the thrill, and the challenge.

Jek has been taking jobs as a freelancer for the last six years, hacking, slicing and shooting his way across the Terminus Systems. He’s turned down several offers from Eclipse, leery of getting involved with the merc gangs, but has nonetheless made enough of a name for himself that he has recently been contacted for a mysterious, high profile contract…