Waspkeeper

Waspkeeper

Ex-Firewatch Support Staff Technician
Known Ex-Ares Bug Research Staff
Metatype	Ork
Street Cred	0
Notoriety	3
Public Awareness	0
Titles and Awards	0
D.O.B.	January 1st 1970
CharGen File	File:Waspkeeper.chum5
PDF	PDF
Priority	Metatype - B Attributes - E Magic/Resonance - E Skills - B Resources - A

Character Information

Summary

Ex-Firewatch support staff technician rescued from Ares. Known Ex-Ares bug research staff who regrets her experiments.

Personality

Shy, soft-spoken person but still have the discipline and drive of someone with a military background. She gets excited by new technology, even if she doesn't fully understand it.

In Play Example

Legwork

Wasp was hired to break into an old Ares research facility, given her past, this should have been simple. Good pay, good intel, couldn't have been better. Wasp takes a minute to think about anything specific to this building (Roll Corporate Structure(Ares) 14 dice [Limited to 7 hits due to the Mental Limit]). With 6 hits, she recalls that the on site management tends to take a long time to get issues fixed, and rumor has it that the staff entrance, while looking functional, actually has no working security measures beyond metahuman eyes due to the security funding priority at this site.

Wasp takes another minute to recall how security should work (Roll Security Design(?) [X] dice [Limited to 7 hits due to the Mental Limit]). With 3 hits, she recalls that security looks stronger then it actually is, until you hit the more secure areas of the facility, relying on high end maglocks (Rating 4+) and cameras (Also rating 4+)

She then takes a moment to consider the astral threats ([6] dice [Limited to 7 hits due to Mental Limit]) surrounding the place. With 1 hit, she knows that Ares facilities often use barriers to keep out threats on the astral plane, although it is unknown if this is the case for this particular building. A good tip to keep an eye out for in the field.

Pre-Alarm

Waspkeeper is packing her gear together as she mulls over her plan of attack to get her team inside. She knows they will have at least three minutes between guard patrols, but only 30 seconds between camera sweeps at the security door and decides to use a Maglock Passkey (see SR5 359 and 448) to open the door quickly. The passkey is a modern-day skeleton key that slips into the cardreader and fools the maglock into thinking that you have the legit credentials to open the door. They’re expensive and illegal as all hell, but the real problem for Waspkeeper is you can’t make or buy one higher than a Rating 4 and she already knows that Ares likes to use high end maglocks from her legwork.

But Waspkeeper is just getting started with her own brand of mojo. She can connect the passkey to her PAN to add more processing power and a +1 wireless bonus. And with her Juryrigger quality Waspkeeper can get more out of a piece of equipment than it was designed for, if only for a short period of time. She wants to get creative and add a little more processing power by sacrificing a standard credstick for parts. The Gamemaster believes the Juryrigger quality allows for such a modification, that it is of Very Hard difficulty and can be done in an Average time. The GM sets an Extended Test with a Threshold of 24 and an Time Interval of 30 minutes (see SR5 48). Waspkeeper needs to roll her Hardware skill of 17 (Skill 6 plus Logic 9 and Security Devices specialization of 2) with an extra bonus of 2 dice from the Juryrigger quality and within her Mental Limit of 11 every thirty minutes of game time until she generates enough successes to reach the Threshold of 23 (because the Juryrigger quality also reduces her target Threshold by one). Since Waspkeeper is still getting ready for the run, she has the time to do this.

Waspkeeper rolls her pool of 19 dice for her first thirty minute interval of work as she cracks open the credstick to pull out the necessary pieces and achieves 7 successes, well within her Mental Limit of 11 but she still needs 16 more successes to make her modification. She rolls her pool again for her second interval but she loses one die because it’s her second attempt and only has 18 dice. She has trouble handling the small pieces and she has her eye on the clock, generating only 4 more successes for a total of 11 successes. It’s been an hour and she can see Meatwad trying to call her repeatedly, but she dismisses the AR notification and keeps soldering the components together, rolling her pool of 17 for the third interval netting 6 more successes for her and bringing her total to 17. She smiles wickedly as she realizes her modifications are almost complete. Waspkeeper again rolls as she starts the fourth interval and excitedly watches her fingers fly and snap all the components together as if they had a mind of their own. With her pool of 16 dice, she generates 8 more successes which is more than enough to reach the Very Hard difficulty set by the GM. After two hours of sweat and mechanical ingenuity, she has a passkey with a damn good chance to breach the security door. That boost won’t even last a minute once she powers it up, but that’s all she needs. She finally answers Meatwad’s repeated calls and tells them to pick her up.

Later that night, the team skulks their way across the grounds of the Ares facility. With the meatier and stealthier members of the team flanking her, Waspkeeper quickly scuttles over to the security door and pulls her modified passkey out of her B&E kit, powers it up and slots it inside the Ares maglock. Her modified passkey is basically a Rating 6 and it turns out Ares put a Rating 5 maglock on this security door, setting up an Opposed Test between the two devices. Both devices roll pools of twice their rating in dice with the modified passkey generating six successes over the maglock’s three. With a net of three successes by her passkey, Waspkeeper opens the security door for her team quickly and quietly. She smiles at the wondering murmurs from the team and winks at Meatwad as they whisk her inside. They never seem to comprehend all the prep time that goes with her little feats of magic.

Background

Waspkeeper was born to a working class family as an ork in Detroit. Her parents worked in Ares factories, using their Ares SIN status to boost their daughter's education quality. In turn, her parents were very expecting of her to excel in her studies, micromanaging aspects of her life such as friends and entertainment so she would not fall behind. However, once out of high school and out on her own, she was turned down from attending an Ares owned university, which her parents lorded over her while she struggled on her own as a mechanist, saving up for a logic augmentation so she could finally attend school.

Once she graduated, she immediately began to work for Ares as a technician and a prototype machinist for almost a year. She felt that she needed to help further Ares' mission to help metahumanity thrive by doing something more progressive for the company; this came in the form of the Research team "Firewatch." She was one of the top picks for the team as a research engineer, fine tuning Ares weapons, bioware and cyberware, as well as modifying the specs and quality on their vehicles and bunkers.

As their work continued, Ares would feed them updates on the war with the bugs, often relaying that they were losing the war. This prompted a "last ditch effort" from corporate for a new project, code named: Hive. The project involved merging metahuman DNA with bug technology to create a superior hybrid to tackle the threat. Being without test subjects, Firewatch were expected to experiment on themselves for results. Waspkeeper was hesitant, but agreed for the greater good of metahumanity... Luckily enough, she did not draw the initial short straws to be a test subject, but this did not ease her nerves for what they had to do to the friends she had made and the people she looked up to.

After several horrific scenerios of experimentation, with morale low and mortality rates high, researchers began to complain to the higher ups, most would devolve into arguments, some drawn to acts of violence. Self defense manslaughter claims only kept getting more frequent. After several weeks, most of the researchers had had enough, trying to escape, few did, while others were captured and forced to undergo experimentation. The Ares officials wanted to make an example out of these would be deserters, subjecting them to the most unethical treatments they could perform, creating the most grotesque monsters yet, a show of what a lack of loyalty would get you.

Meanwhile in UCAS, a plan was being hatched against the facility by Aztechnology to send in a group of highly skilled runners to eliminate the scientists and the prototype she had been tasked to work on. Waspkeeper surrendered quickly, having little loyalty left for Ares, pleading to take her with them. They agreed, fighting their way out of the facility, killing the head researcher along the way. She watched as the place where she had spent the worst years of her life be destroyed in a pillar smoke. She shuddered, beginning to cry as her nightmare finally came to an end. The Aztechnology Johnson praised the runner team for their accomplishments, but condemned them for wanting to keep her from harm. This kindness opened her eyes, lighting the spark in what she would become after joining Ex-Firewatch.

Once she was in Seattle, she set her sights on Ares, taking up a shadow runner lifestyle, taking any bit of work that could harm Ares in any way. Rumors began to spread of her involvement with the Firewatch project, landing her a rather harsh nickname that she reluctantly embraced.

Narrative Significant Qualities

Bad Rep - I helped convert some of the Firewatch into bugs. I can't wash my hands of that.

Favored (Specific Target, Biased): Ex-Firewatch - The ex-Firewatch are the true heroes of Ares, they have given up so much and are truly good people.

Flashbacks II: Bugs - How did Ares think that merging bug spirit biology into the metahuman form would give us any advantage. I remember the larvae...the squirming...the screaming...the suffering...it is too much.