Shlice

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.	September 11, 2053
Drive Link	https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yIq47W4R3WQ2pv9VzN-nrpMO1kKvASCj
Approved?	Yes
Priority	Metatype - B Attributes - E Magic/Resonance - E Skills - B Resources - A

Character Information

Summary

Ex-Firewatch support staff technician & combat engineer rescued from Ares. Known Ex-Ares bug research staff who regrets her part in Ares' experiments.

Goals

Make things right, fight bugs, and support Ex-Firewatch. Gain allies and resources for the fight. Save or destroy Ares.

Personality

Shy, soft-spoken person with the discipline and drive instilled by her military background. She gets excited by new technology, even if she doesn't fully understand it. Has a sweet tooth. Won't say what happened to her flesh arms.

Appearance

Prominently visible are her shiny chrome arms, highly dexterous, and bulked up with built in tools and medical gear, and the Ares Thunderstruck she slugs around when the situation calls for the really big guns. As an orc with obvious, somewhat bulky cyber, some might underestimate her technical expertise and astounding logical faculties.

Clothing

Camo patterned armored coveralls and kneepads. Not quite the right fit for a high society party.

Matrix Persona

Runs an Ares Firewatch avatar with stripped insignia. Her icons are themed on modern, realistic objects.

In Play

Legwork: Knowledge Skills & Matrix

Her knowledge about Ares, Biotech and Bugs seems quite specific, but her Skilljack and Skillsoft subscription let her download many conceiveable knowledge skills straight into her brain, and roll 13 dice for any professional and academic skills and 8 dice for any interest skills, as long as she can find them in the database.

She can also scour the matrix for information, rolling 18 (20 if she's feeling like risking hot-sim) dice for Matrix Search and cutting search times in half or quartering them with her programs.

Locksmith & Hardware

Waspkeeper can open a lot of physical barriers nondestructively with these two skills. Her Maglock Passkey lets her or one of her allies attempt to do it even faster, while almost looking like they belong.

Juryrigger

If you can imagine it, there's a good chance Waspkeeper can make it work, somehow. On a wing and a prayer, with bubblegum and a few spot welds, or some extra electronics haphazardly soldered into a device. Check out SR5 page 75. Temporarily boosting the rating of the Maglock Passkey is a neat trick, for example.

RCC

Comlinks are for casuals. Waspkeeper runs with an RCC, closer in size to a laptop than to a smartphone. It controls her drones, and provides access to the matrix. Her datajack+ lets her use a direct neural interface. Where that (or the drones, or a hilariously illegal gauss rifle) may draw unwanted attention, she can use the Wrapper program to disguise the matrix icons as innocuous devices.

The RCC and datajack together can run 7 programs, 9 when one of those 9 is Virtual Machine. Quick descriptions of their functionality are given on the sheet, check the books for full details. Programs marked with "Always" are a good idea to always have running, while those marked as "Situational" can be swapped in when appropriate.

Check out Core p267, "Noise Reduction & Sharing". Basically you get extra Noise Reduction to the tune of 5 - [# of Autosofts you run]. The Swarm program does not count against this number.

Drones & Vehicles

GMC Bulldog: A sturdy truck for heavy loads. Equipped with an improved pilot software and all the mods you need to change identity on the fly and shake off tracking and pursuit. Doesn't have a nail strip ejector yet, though.

Evo Proletarian: Two handy helpers that can teamwork a hardware test with 6 dice each. They also help to pass yourself off as maintenance worker.

MCT Fly-Spy: Eleven sneaky little drones that can scout out buildings, watch exits and provide all sorts of other intel. Use the Swarm software for maximum effect.

Telestrian Shamus: This special sensor drone uses a quicksilver camera to document magic phenomena invisible to the mundane eye, and sees through solid matter using X-Ray, among other sensor functions. This could also be used to back up a cover story for why you are where you are. May require support from a teammate with a good Con skill.

Combat Options

Her Thunderstruck is an electric railgun, aka a gauss rifle; the bleeding edge of Ares weapons tech. It's a serious piece of hardware for making uncomfortably large holes in things and people. She wields it well, rolling 19 dice (agi 9, skill 6, specialization, smartlink) before she even Takes Aim.

When the situation calls for it, Frag and HE grenades can deal with more targets than the slow firing Thunderstruck, or blow away minor obstacles. Flashbangs and Neurostun VII provide a non-lethal option and (Thermal) Smoke can shield a retreat or provide a misdirection. Her 12 dice are enough to throw reasonably well.

For self defense, should she find herself facing a low level threat unarmed, she can discharge electricity from her shock hand up to ten times before she has to recharge it. The 12 dice can be increased by charging (+1 die) and by declaring a touch attack (+2 dice, hits on a tie, but no bonus damage from net hits).

Waspkeeper can also take a support role boost her teammates with through the matrix using Target Device (R5 30) and Tag (KC 40) for offense, I Am The Firewall (KC 38) for defense, and Calibrate (KC 37) for initiative.

Further Reading

For those who want to delve further, we have an extensive Waspkeeper In Play Example, which explores some mechanics in excruciating detail. It is by no means required reading.

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, they were highly demanding of her excelling 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 logic augmentations 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, 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 the place where she had spent the worst years of her life be destroyed in a pillar of smoke and fire. 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.

Narratively 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.

Run History

Hitting Them Where It Hurts 14000 nuyen, 1 hug, 4 karma, +2 rep OtherCon

Affiliations

Allies

Ex-Firewatch

Project Pyro Detractors in Ares

Enemies

Project Pyro Supporters in Ares