Tower

PLACEHOLDER

Tower

Polytech Wiz
technomancer, medic, drone mechanic
Player	[1]
Metatype	?
Street Cred	0
Notoriety	0
Public Awareness	0
Titles and Awards	0
D.O.B.	2051
Folder	[2]
Priority	BECAD

Character Information

Summary

• Tower is a Hungarian gnome tech-generalist, technomancer, drone driver, medic, mechanic in one.
• Tower is the child of a middle-class magical family that hoped she would become a mage.
• Tower was burnt and orphaned in the Crash 2.0.
• Tower is traumatised by her family’s disappointment and their death in the Crash.
• Tower is obsessed with collecting fragments of pre-crash data to rebuild the past.
• Tower is a Matrix native, more at ease online than off.
• Tower is mildly asperger, and awkward around strangers.
• Tower is quirky and inquisitive, fascinated by complex puzzles.
• Tower has an agile mind, excelling in all things scientific and mathematical.
• Tower lives in her head, and in a high fantasy world she created in the Matrix.
• Tower is an unapologetic geek and wears cosplay costume as her normal attire.
• Tower is little and frequently mistaken as a little girl.
• Tower has a soft spots for enchanters like her parents.
• Tower does not like to be identified as a technomancer.

Background

Gyöngyvirág “Gyöngyi” Petőfi was the last of a middle-class family in Budapest; of Prof. Menyhért Petőfi, professor in talismanology in the Faculty of Arcane Sciences, Szent István University, and Dr. Michaela Lehrmann, researcher in hermetic therapy for Alchemix s.r.o.

Both Menyhért and Michaela came from liberal academic families. Gyöngyi’s grandparents were among the awakened dwarves in the first UGE wave, and both families produced several established dwarven magicians. Successfully transitioning into the Sixth World, many family members were gainfully employed in various newly founded arcanology faculties and alchemical corporations. Like Gyöngyi’s parents, her aunts and uncles are known for their expertise in alchemy and artificing. And when Menyhért and Michaela married, it seemed like a long overdue union of two kindred clans.

A third-generation dwarf, Gyöngyi was the last of three children and many more cousins. From an early age, she exhibited the same bright-eyed precocity as her older siblings, even surpassing them in some early childhood intelligence tests. Confident of her prospect, her parents gave little thought to her rather strange aura — Michaela was certain there’s something magical there, but difficult to assense. In any case, there was nothing to worry about — her astral aura would come into shape as she matures.

Except she never quite matured.

It wasn’t until Gyöngyi almost reached mid-teens did her parents notice something amiss. Even for a dwarf, Gyöngyi’s stature was abnormally diminutive. More alarmingly, unlike her siblings who had all demonstrated their magical affinity intuitively, Gyöngyi was almost magically inert, nearly immune to many of her parents’ concoctions. With the study of gnomes still in its infancy, Menyhért and Michaela were helplessly lost as to their daughter’s condition.

Making the matter worse, the shy girl was always ill-at-ease explaining herself. She often found people’s expressions confusing, and navigating personal relationships always felt somehow hazardous. She soon resorted to seeking connection from avatars on the Matrix, even creating her own robotic companions. In these areas, Gyöngyi demonstrated prodigious aptitude. From a young age, she could reassemble drones and machines with intuitive facility. Likewise, she took to the Matrix like she was born there, easily surfing the grids without any instructions.

Sadly, her parents saw her technical affinity not as gifts, but as distraction from her presumed calling in the arcane. They tried their best to steer Gyöngyi back onto the right track. The more they pushed, the more Gyöngyi needed to escape. Before long, she lived most of her life in her fantasy worlds of her own choosing — in online games, in anime trids, and in the company of her buddy drones.

As she grew detached, her parents grew desperate. Little did they know, all their worries would be futile. The Crash 2.0 hit them right when they were on vacation in CAS. It took everyone by surprise, and the Petőfis soon found themselves in the midst of drone rampage. In the chaos, Gyöngyi’s parents and siblings frantically tried to protect Gyöngyi. But one after another, they fell under the machine’s merciless hail of bullets.

Gyöngyi wasn’t sure how she survived the ordeal. But ever since then, she had been somehow able to exert her will on machines, on data, and on the Matrix. In the aftermath, she abandoned the fallen bodies of her family, unable to process the tragedy. She wandered alone in the streets for days, surviving on the machines that would sometimes bend to her wishes. She was eventually picked up by another group of survivors, who took her in as the lost girl she appeared to be. In the following years, she relied on the kindness of strangers and the malleability of machines, eking out an existence in the shadowy fringes. Her previous identity, along with her entire family history, to have been destroyed in the Crash. The only trace left of her former self, incredibly, was found in the fragment of a VR game world, where she once built her own wizard tower. She adopted the Tower as her Matrix icon and became obsessed with reconstructing this lost world, devoting as much time and energy as she could spare.

The effort wasn’t all wasted, as she soon encountered “Quest Giver” Marcs, a data dealer who offered a good price for her salvages. Through his suggestions and introductions, she came to connect with the wider JackPoint, which in turn led her to tech support gigs across North America. By the time she reached Seattle years later, she was already an experienced tech expert. With ample opportunities in Seattle, Tower decided to slow her pace of travels. One of her clients, a deckmeister by the name of Taci "Risc" Hawikuh, took a liking to her. Risc pretended to be her legal guardian and helped her find a lodging. Tower now lives in a cramped house shared with the other massive nerds — which is to say they see each other on the Matrix way more than in meatspace.

Tower continues to take jobs to subsidise her passion — building or rebuilding her lost fantasy worlds. There, in the magical realms of her own creation, she could be the grand wizard her family dreamed for her to be. Atop her enchanted tower, she is far removed from the drudgery of the mundane, and finally free from the disappointments of her traumatic past.

Narrative Significant Qualities

• Curiosity Killed the Cat
• Driven: pre-Crash data
• Favored (specific, outspoken): enchanters
• Prejudice (specific, biased): technomancers
• Social Stress: family

Affiliations

Contacts

• Mr Incognito - Connection 2, Loyalty 1 - Fixer
• "Quest Giver" Marcs - Connection 2, Loyalty 1 - Data Dealer (replaced with public contact above)
• Taci "Risc" Hawikuh - Connection 1, Loyalty 2 - Deckmeister (replaced with public contact above)

In Character Information

SINs

• Csilla Nagy (4): CAS, drones (4)

Appearance

Tower likes to wear practical clothing… or what would pass for practical clothing if you lived in a medieval fantasy. One might call her a committed LARPer, which would be inaccurate since, for her part, she’s playing no role other than her own authentic self.

Standing under a meter tall, she’s often mistaken for an impish little girl. The fact that she often gets into lively conversations with her drones and AR buddies doesn’t help the impression one bit.

Matrix Persona

A fantasy wizard's tower.