Ashe

Ashe

Archetype
Markswoman/Infiltrator Adept: Hybrid(Hermetic/Wuxing)
Player	Clayton [1]
Metatype	Elf
Street Cred	9
Notoriety	1
Public Awareness	0
Titles and Awards	0
D.O.B.	May 19th 2052
Folder	Ashe's Drive Folder [2]
Priority	Metatype - C Attributes - B Magic/Resonance - D (Adept) Skills - A Resources - E

Character Information

Summary

A sneaky, shooty infiltrator adept with a dark past as a former Firewatch cadet. Ashe found herself unknowingly attached to the periphery of Ares' program to weaponize insect spirits. She faked her death and escaped Ares after learning the truth, and now finds herself in the shadows of Seattle. Her specialties are infiltration and combat.

Goals

• Build a new life for herself in the shadows of Seattle
• Escape her past with Ares

Narratively Significant Qualities

• Bilingual - Ashe is Chinese-American, and grew up speaking both English and Cantonese.
• Mentor Spirit (Oracle) - Ashe has been visited by Oracle in her dreams since shortly after awakening as an adept. Oracle provided guidance when Ashe struggled to learn her new powers early on, and pushed Ashe to learn the truth of her last assignment with Ares, which resulted in her fall to the shadows.
• Big Regret - Ashe is a former Firewatch cadet, who was an unwitting part of Ares' efforts to weaponize insect spirits.
• Creature of Comfort (Middle) - Part of how Ashe has coped with her fall from corporate grace is by surrounding herself with the material comforts she grew up with. A middle class environment is the lowest level that will not serve as a jarring reminder of how she's fallen.
• Phobia (Bees/Wasps) - During a specimen collection mission, she was attacked and nearly killed by a wasp spirit - impaled through the abdomen by a pure form's stinger.

Run History

• Polling Places - 11/17/2017
• The Hunter and the Hunted - 12/3/2017
• Pyro [Semi-Prime] - 12/17/2017
• A Growing Concern - 12/23/2017
• An Auspicious Change - 1/1/2018
• Midnight - 1/5/2018
• After Midnight - 1/6/2018
• Time to Make a Mess - 1/14/2018
• Cobra: Uncoiling the Mind Part 2 - 1/19/2018
• Cobra: Uncoiling the Mind Part 3 - 1/22/2018
• Cobra: Uncoiling the Mind Part 4 - 2/19/2018
• No Rose Without Thorns - 3/11/2018
• Removing the Veil [Initiation] - 3/24/2018

Affiliations

Contacts

• Madame Butterfly - Connection 4, Loyalty 3 - Fixer
• Tiffany Biliquis - Connection 6, Loyalty 1 - Swag(Talislegger)
• Nina Gniewek - Connection 6, Loyalty 1 - Swag(Gun Runner)
• Michelle Delacroix - Connection 6, Loyalty 2 - Swag(Street Doc)

Organizations

Firewatch (Trainee) - Formerly

Allies

Cobra_(Carrier_Oriskany)

Enemies

None (Yet)

Reputation

• Ex-Firewatch: +2
• Shotozumi Gumi: +3
• Spinrad Global: +3
• Zentralrat: +2
• Octagons: -3

In Character Information

Backstory:

In 2018, when The Peoples' Republic of China dissolved, and tensions rose to a boiling point between the newly formed Canton Confederation and its new neighbors, an Ares scientist named Chiu Huiling requested and received a transfer to the United States. She was transferred to Denver, along with her seven year old daughter, Chiu Ling. While there, Huiling and Ling Chiu would watch the Unification treaty turn the USA into the UCAS in 2030. Over time, Ling Chiu went on to become a mid-level executive at Ares' Denver division, and have a daughter of her own in 2052, named Hana Chiu.

Hana grew up in Denver as a proud, born and raised Ares corporate citizen, going to school in the Ares education system. It was during early high school that her life took its first major turn. During a routine screening, Ashe tested positive for awakened talent, and her education was diverted to a special program to cultivate her abilities. She struggled to use her powers at first, the techniques her instructors taught her didn't seem to work for her. Eventually, a voice came to her in her dreams, suggesting new approaches and techniques to unlock her abilities. These suggestions were phrased in the form of questions for Hana to puzzle out, and only offered partial solutions, but each one brought her closer. Eventually, with Oracle's guidance, Ashe came to master her powers. Upon demonstrating her successful mastery of her first adept power for her instructors, she found her vision shifting, with strange new colors and perceptions entering her awareness. As she realized that her perception had shifted to the astral plane, she saw the astral form of a woman wearing a plain white dress and a purple veil, standing behind that of her instructor. The astral form of Oracle removed her veil and disappeared with a smile, leaving Hana with the gift of astral sight.

During her magical training, a talent assessment revealed that Hana would be well suited to covert ops work. After graduation at age 18, her life took its second major turn as Hana was assigned to a covert ops training program and was assigned to be a Firewatch Cadet. After a few years of successful assignments, Hana found herself unknowingly attached to Project Phalanx, one of Ares' programs to weaponize insect spirits. Her role was primarily to eliminate those outside the company who might discover the project, and to clean up witnesses to the tests. Sometimes, however, she was also assigned as an auxiliary to more experienced Firewatch units sent to capture insect shamans or insect spirits. Initially, Ashe was unaware of the true nature of Project Phalanx, believing the official story that it was an effort to develop weapons to better fight insect spirits. She believed what Ares told her when they said that her targets were threats to the company, and believed that the assignments to capture insect spirits and insect shamans were to capture subjects for study and weapon testing.

Over time, however, details didn't add up, and Oracle constantly pushed her to investigate why. A surprising number of her targets had been journalists, and one of the subject collection assignments she had been attached to was ambushed by a cabal of spider shamans. Spider shamans hated insect spirits, and should have had no reason to obstruct a project aimed killing them. There was also the fact that the majority of the specimen collection missions targeted shamans rather than spirits. It seemed like the spirits themselves would make better test subjects, unless... Ares was using the shamans to summon spirits to test weapons on? The thought of Ares giving human sacrifices to insect shamans to practice their craft was revolting, but Ashe suppressed her misgivings. Ares was making the world a safer place, and if they had to resort to uncomfortable means to achieve that end, so be it.

Further investigation revealed that several Firewatch personnel on the project who had been transferred away to undisclosed assignments, including some Ashe had known, had actually been transferred to something called the 'Special Assignments Battalion'. To Ashe's surprise, the Special Assignment Battalion was attached to Project Phalanx. Why did they need to create a 'Special Assignments Battalion' when they already had Firewatch personnel? As she investigated further, what little she could learn about the Special Assignments Battalion's assignments suggested that they had little to do with the goals of the Project Phalanx. It seemed as though they were being used to target any enemy of Ares who presented an opportune target, with no particular focus.

Answers came when Ashe received another assassination assignment, with even less explanation than usual. Ashe hadn't even left the briefing room before feeling the familiar tug of Oracle at the back of her mind, pushing her to ask why. After terminating her mark, she was able to search his commlink and find documentation confirming that he had been an Ares employee, a Sys-Op attached to Project phalanx who had grown inquisitive. His commlink also contained a list of personnel transferred to the Special Assignments Battalion. Ashe was shocked and disgusted to see the names of several of the insect shamans she had helped capture listed as members. Her horror grew as other documents revealed records of Ares allowing those same shamans to invest the Firewatch operatives assigned to the Special Assignments Battalion with insect spirits. There were notes documenting observations of the investment process, and the "success" or "failure" of those processes. She even found a roster of the membership of the special assignments battalion, detailing what type of insect spirit each member had been invested with, including those she had once known as friends. It was here that her life took its last major turn. She couldn't go back after seeing those documents, and she didn't know who to trust. How long would it be before she received her own transfer to the Special Assignments Battalion? What would they do if they learned she had browsed those documents? Hana destroyed the commlink as her mission required, and made contact with a notorious gang operating nearby, one that had a reputation for executing its enemies in cruel and unusual ways. She stuck a deal with them to stage an execution: immolation by white phosphorus, a method sufficient to destroy any evidence of the deception. Hana stole a body from a morgue, a female Asian elf about her height and weight, and met her new 'friends' for the transaction. As she watched her old life go up in flames, she decided what her new name would be: Ashe.

Ashe fled to Seattle to start a new life as a shadowrunner, the only career her skill set and need to fly below the legal radar lent themselves to. She made contact with a woman named Tiffany Biliquis. Ashe needed to sell off a few pieces of high end gear that would raise too much attention for a new shadowrunner, and it just so happened that Tiffany was looking to buy a few of those pieces for some of her clients. They met at the Butterfly Effect, with Tiffany booking Ashe as a guest at the club, and negotiated the deal. Ashe wasn't in a position to drive a hard bargain with Tiffany, and she knew it; that was probably the reason Tiffany was interested in buying from Ashe instead of her usual suppliers. Ashe sold the equipment to Tiffany at a sweetheart price, pending inspection of the goods, and agreed to provide security on one of her more dangerous shopping trips, in exchange for a place on Tiffany's contact list and the information that the proprietor of The Butterfly Effect, Madame Butterfly, was a fixer with very particular requirements for runners who wished to be considered, as well as the information she would need to find the host. Ashe made contact with a local decker named Bishop. The stark white, tuxedo clad matrix avatar agreed to put Ashe on the host's invite list. Wishing to prove herself personally as well, Ashe procured a bottle of fine bourbon and a box of fine dark chocolates, infiltrated Madame Butterfly's office, and left the offering on her desk with a card. She then left a note for Madame Butterfly on the host, appraising her of the gift, and requesting consideration as one of her runners.

With a fixer and a supplier in hand, Ashe acquired a small, one bedroom efficiency in the most tangled up knot of side streets and back alleys she could find in Capitol Hill, and commissioned a fake SIN, Sheila Cheng (chosen in honor of the pirate queen Ching Shih). There was no going to back to her old life now. For better or worse, she had fallen from corporate grace and into the shadows.

Current Events:

12/18/2078

After nearly dying during a run against an Ares black site, Ashe reevaluated some of her priorities in her new life, and how the people she's met fit into them. She asked her friend, Cobra, on a dinner date to the Orchid, and the two are currently seeing each other.

12/23/2078

After helping to extract a squad of ex-Firewatch personnel who were being hunted by Ares black ops forces, Mr. Johnson gave Ashe a commlink and offered her a job alongside them. He knew about her past association with Firewatch, and offered to recruit her for that reason. Ashe declined the job offer, but can reach Mr. Johnson using that commlink if she has a change of heart. Unbeknownst to Ashe, Mr. Johnson works for Spinrad Global.

12/24/2078

Ashe confides in Cobra that she is a former Ares black ops agent. She does not share any details about her former work, or where she is from.

2/19/2079

Ashe helps Cobra get her memory back

Symbols and Signatures

• Ashe sometimes uses a stylized image of a red fox as a signature, when she does not want to leave a name.

Matrix Search Table

None

Shadow Community Table

None

SINs

Sheila Cheng - R4

• Licenses: Adept, Blades, Concealed Carry, Drivers, Firearms, Foci, Private Investigator, Restricted Armor, Restricted Augmentation
• Named in honor of the 19th century pirate queen Ching Shih, who fought the law and won in the most definitive way possible.

Appearance

Ashe is a young, Chinese-American, elvish woman. She is 6'0" (1.83 m), making her a little short for an elf, and is of slender build. She typically wears her hair tied back in a ponytail, and always has a well composed and professional appearance.

Clothing

Ashe dresses professionally, but still stylishly and pragmatically. Her current favorite is a Zoe Executive Suite.

Examples of her typical style can be found here. [3]

Examples of her Equipment can be found here. [4]

Matrix Persona

Ashe's matrix persona is an elvish woman, wearing an elegant red evening gown and opera gloves.

Astral Form

Ashe's astral form is a shadowy silhouette of herself, with a faint white glow about her body and a faint purple glow emanating from her eyes. There appears to be something like a large bruise or scar on her astral form's abdomen.

Tastes and Style

Trid Genre: Mysteries, Detective Noir

Music: Classic Rock, developing an increasing appreciation for certain subsets of Punk Rock due to time spent at the Daze

Food: Margaritas, Chinese (especially Cantonese), Southwestern Tex Mex (especially a big burrito smothered in green chili), Country Cooking (especially chicken fried steak and sausage gravy)

Pastimes: Amateur Bartending, Reading Mystery Novels, Maybe Writing Amateur Mystery Novels?

Media Mentions

None

ShadowGrid Profile Comments

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