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 | 1 |
| CDP | 62 |
| D.O.B. | October 12, 2062 |
| Age | 23 |
| 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 needed 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 the meat has always been wrong; both mind-numbingly slow and painfully overwhelming. She spent her early life in a haze of depression and boredom, her body an oversized prison and her mind prone to severe mood swings. To others she came off as distant and uninterested, occasionally volatile. To herself, she came off as a piece of shit. Growing up in the misery of the Barrens didn't help, and the pent up frustrations of her parents only made it worse. They found their child's condition infuriating. It was incompatible with the person they were trying to raise, and they would break their child's habits by any means necessary. She was kept isolated and strictly controlled, belittled for any perceived failure to meet expectations. The threat of a beating was used to keep her in line, a threat that her father often followed through on. By the time she was fourteen, Cricket firmly believed that her life had no worth. Then, she emerged.
With no one to guide her through it, Cricket's emergence did not go smoothly. In fact, it ended up bricking half of the apartment's electronics. But none of that mattered when the girl who had never even had trodes took her first jump into the matrix. She was thrust into a world where things finally felt right, and given a living persona that could be everything that her body wasn't. She delved into the net under the shadow of the corporate hosts, basking in its joys and searching for an explanation as to what she was. Unfortunately, as a newly emerged techno and a complete matrix novice, her romping was about as subtle as an airhorn. After a few weeks of searching and trespassing, the authorities gave Cricket the full technomancer treatment. The local demiGOD came down on her like a boot upon a bug, causing a dumpshock that nearly killed her.
Cricket had learned a lot in her weeks of searching, and even her bio-feedback ridden brain could recognize that she had just been caught doing something illegal. She was terrified, more so of her parents than the police, and decided that she had to leave. She staggered out of her room, delirious with pain. Blood welled in her eyes and gushed out of her nose, dripping down onto her shirt as she stumbled into the kitchen. The last conversation that she ever had with her parents was lost in a haze of brain damage; all she can remember is that she puked. Fifteen minutes later, collapsed in an alley with only the vomit-stained clothes on her back, she watched the three KE cruisers pull up to her building. Just like that, she was homeless.
It's honestly a miracle that Cricket lived more than a few days; she had no survival skills, and she could barley even stand on her own. She begged, stole, and scrounged from dumpsters to keep herself just short of starvation, jumping into the matrix at every opportunity. It was a coping mechanism, a way to escape from the gutters she had found herself in. Exploring it was the only thing that kept her going for the first few months. Hacking comes naturally to one whose very existence on the net is illegal, and after about four months Cricket was good enough to be recruited by a band of small-time gangers. She scrubbed the trackers on their stolen gear, and they gave her a place to sleep. It was better than nothing.
The next four years of her life were spent hopping from crew to crew. None of her gigs ever lasted for more than a few months, whether because the gang collapsed or they decided to kick her out of it. Luckily for Cricket, 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. She viewed them as arrogant slints. With the exception of Millipede, a dwarven decker and her former roommate, the few friends that she made either died or fell out of touch.
It was during this period of her life that she developed her more radical tendencies. The constant fear of life in the Barrens festered into anger as she got older, and she started using anarchy as an outlet for it. She needed someone to blame, and more importantly, she needed someone to get back at. Who better than the corporations that were actually responsible for the poverty that surrounded her. Even the matrix, her paradise, was being throttled by capital; the shitty public grid was plastered with ads, and all the hosts were gated off by paywalls and IC. The corporations were bringing their "meatspace drek" onto the net, and Cricket wouldn't stand for it.
In time, Cricket fell out of the gang life. The corporate vandalism, along with the heat that it brought, ballooned her ego and tanked whatever relationship she had left with her gangmates. Through Priest, a Neo-Anarchist fixer whose charity saved her life on the streets, she entered into the shadows to pursue her revolutionary goals. As of late she's been training in cybercombat under the renowned decker Sp4rks, and joined up with the burn-faced idiot Barracuda to become the Hellraisers' resident technomancer. She is a slightly more stable person than when she first came to the Haven, but remains a coiled spring of anger and unresolved body issues. When she first arrived on the scene, her life span was measured in days. Now, it's probably closer to weeks.
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.
Budding Technoshaman (Resonant Stream: Technoshaman): Cricket prefers to work alone, which makes her affinity for sprites both confusing and frustrating. She's made progress in harnessing her strengths, even if she still can't figure out what those damn things are thinking.
Cybercrime Apprentice (Sensei: Cybercombat [Sp4rks], Common Sense): Cricket has started learning from Sp4rks after getting destroyed by him in a matrix duel. The experience has given her a much clearer idea of her own limitations, and she'll occasionally think twice before doing something stupid. Occasionally.
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 |
| Saul Goodman | 5 | 2 | Custom(A,N,K,G) | Baker | Iron Chef, Pastry Chef, Bread Baker, Artisanal Ingrediants, World-Famous Baked Goods, Improved Ability: Artisan (Baking) | Even |
| News Van Dan | 3 | 3 | Legwork | Guerilla Reporter (Infobroker) | Infobroker, Conspiracy Theorist, Drone Operator, Hacktivist | 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.