Cricket
 | |
| Technomancer, Data Thief, and Wannabe Revolutionary | |
|---|---|
| "Winning comes first. Keeping your brain in tact is just a bonus." | |
| Discord | @disco goblin#9660 |
| https://www.reddit.com/user/Discowhor | |
| Street Cred | 0 |
| Notoriety | 0 |
| Public Awareness | 0 |
| CDP | 62 |
| D.O.B. | October 12, 2060 |
| Age | 25 |
| Folder | [1] |
| Priority | Metatype - C (Oni) Attributes - D Magic/Resonance - A Skills - B Resources - E |
Character Information
Summary
Cricket is a tall, hotheaded, and permanently-disheveled Oni. A technomancer specializing in data theft, she runs the shadows to build the contacts and gather the resources she needs to free the Matrix from corporate control. Her passion for her cause is matched only by her disregard for her life.
Goals
- Break the corporate stranglehold on the Matrix
- Liberate every bit of incriminating data she can find
- Build a group of likeminded technos and deckers
- Give GOD the bloodiest nose it's ever gotten
- Create a single, unified grid free of private property
- Move into an apartment with fewer Devil Rats
- Get platinum ranked in Ultimate Blood Brawl IV
Background
For as long as Cricket can remember, she's felt out of place in the world. Everything in meatspace felt wrong; both painfully slow and completely overwhelming. Her pre-emergence life was spent in a haze of depression and boredom. Others saw her as distant, uninterested, too lost in her own head to focus on anything. Growing up in the misery of the Barrens didn't help, and neither did her family. Her parents were creatures of pent-up frustrations, and had a tendency to take them out on their child. They were less than understanding of Cricket's condition, resorting to verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse to try and "fix" her. Because of this, Cricket spent most of her early life convinced her existence was a mistake. Her emergence at 14 changed everything.
With no one to guide her and a less-than-supportive home, Cricket's emergence did not go smoothly. In fact, it ended up bricking half of the apartment's electronics. But when Cricket finally took the jump into the Matrix, she was thrust into a world where things finally felt right. As she looked out over the Matrix's infinite horizon, she knew in her gut that this was where she belonged. She just wished she could see the sky. In the looming shadow of the corporate hosts Cricket delved the net, searching for info on what was happening to her. A newly emerged technomancer is a lot of things, but "subtle" is not one of them; the local demiGOD came down on her like a boot upon a bug. The Matrix saved Cricket's life, but that first dumpshock nearly killed her.
Cricket was new to the Matrix, but she wasn't an idiot. Growing up in Redmond had given her a healthy fear of cops, and she assumed (correctly) that she had just done something very illegal. Her parents would hand her over at the first opportunity; she had to leave. Delirious with pain Cricket staggered out of her room, pinching her nose to stop the flow of blood. The last conversation that she ever had with her parents was lost in a haze of brain damage; all Cricket can remember is that she puked. Fifteen minutes later, collapsed in an alley with only the clothes on her back, she watched as two KE cruisers pulled up to her building. Just like that, she was homeless.
It took everything Cricket had to survive more than a couple of days. She begged, stole, and scrounged from dumpsters to get by, keeping herself just short of starvation. The Matrix offered an escape from the misery, one that she took at every opportunity. It didn't take long to learn how to hide from GOD, and learning how to hack was the next logical step. After about five months on the streets, Cricket was good enough to get recruited by a band of small-time gangers. She gave them matrix support and scrubbed their stolen gear, they gave her a place to sleep. It wasn't an ideal arrangement, but it was better than nothing.
The next four years of her life were spent hopping from crew to crew. None of her gigs lasted very long, but the skills of a technomancer are always in demand. She was never very close with her gangmates; the relationship was one of convenience, and Cricket's time on the streets had given her the personality of a devil rat. They viewed her as weird and abrasive, and she viewed them as arrogant slints. The few friends she made either died or fell out of touch, with the exception of her now-roommate Millipede. It was during this period of her life that she developed her more radical tendencies, using anarchy as an outlet for her constant rage and frustration. She came to view the Matrix as a spoiled paradise, strangled by the grip of its megacorporate masters. It was the only place that she could have anything resembling happiness, and she couldn't even use it without being hunted. She decided to try and change that.
In time Cricket fell out of the gang life, turning to the shadows to further her revolutionary goals. She has little regard for the value of her own life; she tells herself (and others) that she's out to make a change, but on some level she's just looking for a good place to die. A part of her knows that the path she's on is unsustainable, but the only thing she knows how to do is move forward.
Narrative Significant Qualities
Positive
Matrix Scrapper (Hair Trigger, Instinctive Hack, Better on the Net [Sleaze]): What Cricket lacks in formal education, she makes up for in instincts. Her skills have saved her from death before, and she's confident that they can do it again.
Fish in Water (One With the Matrix II, Hi-Rez): Cricket isn't just acclimated to the Matrix, she's built for it. Her living persona feels like more of a home than her actual body.
Negative
Rebel With a Cause (Data Liberator, Curiosity Killed the Cat): For better or worse (usually worse), Cricket is dedicated. She's willing to take any risks if it means furthering her cause. She's also just really, really curious.
Not Built For Meatspace (Disheveled, Reduced Sense [Eyesight]): Cricket doesn't care about her appearance, and it shows. Her clothes are shabby, her tusks are crooked, she has permanent bedhead, and her oversized glasses make her eyes look like a bug's (hence the name).
Striking Skin Pigmentation: Cricket's appearance would be remarkably forgettable, if it weren't for the fact that her skin is bright red.
Run History
Affiliations
Contacts
Millipede: A dwarven shadow decker, Millipede is one of Cricket's very few actual friends. The pair met in the Barrens, fighting on opposite sides of a turf war. They reached a cybercombat stalemate (neither of them were very good), and their battle soon devolved into wildly spraying at each other with machine pistols. They emptied their magazines without hitting a single shot, and decided to just start pretending to hack each other. They've been friends ever since.
Despite their similar upbringings, Millipede is significantly better adjusted than Cricket. He shares his roommate's politics, but doesn't pursue them with the same suicidal zeal. Although he'd never admit it, he's worried about her. For Cricket's part, she shows Millipede about as much affection as she's capable of. He's a sort of anchor in her life, and the only person she's willing to fully trust.
Priest: Cricket owes Priest a great debt; when she was first tossed out on the street, it was the charity from Priest's congregation that kept her alive. Over time their relationship deepened; She would provide info and communications for Priest's protests, and he would provide a place to go if all else failed. Once she came of age, Priest facilitated her entrance into the Haven.
That being said, the two get along like fire and high explosives. Priest thinks of Cricket as a wayward child, walking the right path for the wrong reasons. Cricket thinks of Priest as a raving, bullet-addled lunatic. The two bicker constantly over the minute differences in their politics, especially when it comes to the subject of drugs. Priest is a die-hard prohibitionist, whereas Cricket pops Psyche pills like they're candy. Despite the tensions, Cricket believes that she owes Priest her life. She'd never let him know, but she would go through hell if it meant helping him.
| Contact | Connection | Loyalty | Archetype | Profession | Aspects | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Millipede | 2 | 5 | Legwork | Decker | Selective, Shadow Decker, Anarchist, Barrens Rat, Vandal | Even |
| Priest | 3 | 4 | Fixer | Activist Fixer | Temperance is a Virture, All are Welcome in the House of the Lord, Show no Fear, Soldiers of God!, Bring me your Huddled Masses, Know Thine Enemy, Preserve the Peace | Even |
Organizations
Blue Crab Gang: +2 Rep
Ancients: +2 Rep
Allies
Her roommate Millipede, and anyone else fightin' the good fight.
Enemies
GOD, the corps, GOD, the government, anyone who tries to talk to her in meatspace, GOD.
In Character Information
Symbols and Signatures
When Cricket wants to leave a calling card after stealing data, she'll make an empty copy of the file filled with bugs, which will swarm the first persona that opens it. She often delivers data in the form of little crickets.
Matrix Search Table
| Threshold | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Scattered reports of a petty hacker going by the name. No concrete details. The Sixth World Encyclopedia defines crickets as Orthopean insects distantly related to grasshoppers. |
| 3 | The hacker is a frequent poster on Neo-Anarchist forums. They've bragged several times about committing data theft and corporate vandalism. |
| 6 | On one such forum, the hacker claimed that they're a technomancer during a debate over a fighting game's netcoding. This claim was immediately challenged as a lie, to which the hacker apparently responded by dataspiking their opponent. |
Shadow Community Table
| Threshold | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Some sort of hacker that operates in Seattle. Doesn't seem like they have a particularly notable reputation. |
| 3 | They're new to the shadowrunning scene, but have been operating as a small-time ganger in Redmond for a while. Apparently they're also an Oni. |
| 5 | Known as "bug eyes" and "kind of an asshole" by many of her former gangmates. Left the gang scene to pursue more political interests. |
SINs
Jessie Elwood (UCAS) (R4 Fake)
An Oni of a similar build and skin tone, but with a noticeably neater appearance. Works low level IT for small businesses in Renton.
- Driver's License (R4 Fake)
- Firearms License (R4 Fake)
Appearance
Physical
Cricket is a tall, gangly Oni with cherry red skin and dull green eyes. Her grey hair hangs like kelp down to her permanently-slumped shoulders. Her horns are stubby, her ears are droopy, and her tusks are slightly crooked. When not in the Matrix, she's surrounded by an oppressively neurotic aura. She's constantly twitching and tapping her fingers, much to the annoyance of anyone sitting nearby.
Clothing
Cricket's typical outfit consists of bootleg track pants, ratty tank tops, VERY worn athletic shoes, and her big round glasses. She has not bought new clothes in about a year and a half. The nicest thing she owns is her armored jacket. It's black and has rainbow ants drawn across the back.
Matrix Persona
Cricket's Matrix Persona is a tiny humanoid cricket, at the bottom end of the persona size limits. It wears a black suit jacket over a pink tank top, with a small gold chain around it's neck.