After years of combat/stealth/tech - oriented PCs, I decided to try something a bit off the wall. Presented here is a character who entered the shadows by the back door, not intent on 'making it' in corporate espionage, and with goals all his own.
This is a PC I have started playing in Shadowrun Missions and present him here to get feedback as to whether you think this kid will survive long enough to reach his goals, and how you might interact with him. He bears bits and pieces from my own youth (see if you can get the movie reference from his name), from my daughter, and from a friend's son.
Also, I am interested in comments on the type of Magical focus he seeks. Hmmm... sounds almost like two posts.
I post here rather than in Shadowrun Missions just to catch more eyes.
Character History
[ Spoiler ]
Martin O’Malley (Bongo Slade on the street) was born into a middle-class family in Toronto. Martin’s parents are very conscious of class mobility and wanted their son to have as good a life as they could help him get. They had high expectations for him because of talents he exhibited early in life. He has a knack for languages, and so “foreign service” was discussed, and he is also very artistic in several ways, and so, while not as lucrative, a career in “the arts” was also seen as a possibility. Above all, education to a high degree was considered necessary.
Martin just wanted to play music. He skipped school, but studied music and poetry (lyrics) on his own. Percussion was his calling. Anything you could hit was his instrument. He engaged in petty crime to pay for fun with his buddies and private lessons with the best teachers (and that he didn’t convince his parents to do so in a legitimate fashion tells much about him). He travelled all over Toronto and region, playing music, dealing and stealing. His school report cards were … well, not always failing, but certainly not encouraging. He thought it would be cool to have electronic instrumentation implanted in him, but a test implant quickly showed that he was unreceptive almost to the point of allergy to mechanical implants.
One music teacher was an adept, and saw the spark of Magic in the boy. (Martin picked up the old, outdated Morse Code in a couple of days at a museum. The rhythm of the ‘language’ attracted Martin. The speed with which he picked it up caught the teacher’s eye.) The teacher helped the Magic develop in Martin, who himself developed the Adept way, focussing everything he could into playing his music better, ‘attuning’ to the world around him, ‘listening and seeing’ the music of the world.
Over the course of a year or two, Martin developed some regular places to play, pretty seedy some of them, and learned some survival skills as well. It’s amazing what you can do to an unruly patron with a well-hurled cymbal. Eventually the inevitable happened, and Martin came afoul of the law. Petty theft got him a police record, disapproval and punishment from his parents, and disappointment from his Magic- and music mentor. Martin decided it was time to move on.
Denver looked good. Four nations meeting in one place, and all run by a dragon! There had to be interesting things going on there, new music to learn and play, and maybe a clue to his dream.
Even before he new of his own Magical talent, Martin had a sense that there was a ‘music underlying it all’. In dreams and daytime musings (in class of course) Martin imagined that the Earth has a heartbeat, and that the right person, maybe in the right place and time, could play that rhythm and be in tune with Gaea. This is the goal that Martin, now Bongo Slade, seeks in the streets of Denver and in the countryside around.
The first step is to become the best drummer in the world. (Hey, he’s young enough to think in those terms.) His skill is amazing, to the point that he can mesmerize his audience if he wants to. He is trying to hone his skill, his talent and his Magic to bring him to the point where he can play that dream.
He figures he must also develop his Magic into that scary realm of Metamagic. Bongo knows that in an academic environment he could have access to the latest theories, but he won’t go there ever again. Even worse would be to sell his talent to some corporation, even if they would think it worth hiring. No, he has to do it on his own, on the streets and in the woods. He uses his Magic for music and for profit, exercising it in order to make it grow. When he can initiate, he will seek Adept Centering and then Infusion, both directed towards making his musical ability beyond the range of ordinary humanity. In the meantime he keeps his eyes and ears open for any clues or stories about the underlying rhythm of the world. He is learning how to make musical drums, and is especially keen on finding out if some kind of ‘music focus’ had ever been made. (That is, something that enhances magic directed specifically towards performance.)
So he does what he has to in order to make ends meet and to stretch his talents. Runs in the shadows are a fast way to wealth and power, as far as he can see. He offers the ability to distract, to investigate and memorize instantly, to describe in great detail what he has heard and seen, 'five finger discounts', basic computer skills and second-string backup in a fight. As yet, he hasn’t become disillusioned, despite the seamier aspects of things he has done ‘for his art’, and despite the signs all around him that failure can be final.
Character Traits
- brash, young know-it-all (though of course he is too young to know much at all)
- consummately confident in his own skill as a musician
- willing to do almost anything to get ahead in his goal – wetwork?? Hmmm…
- able to cooperate with a team, even a team leader, but despises established authority figures and organizations
- curious about anything and everything going on around him, and will investigate
- always looking for the music in things, particularly rhythms
Character Stats
[ Spoiler ]
Bongo Slade
Human Adept
### ATTRIBUTES ###
BOD 3
AGI 4
REA 3
STR 3
CHA 4
INT 5
LOG 3
WIL 3
INIT 8 (1 pass)
MAG 6
ESS 6
EDG 3
### QUALITIES ###
Adept
Aptitude- artisan
Sensitive system
SINner (2)
### ADEPT POWERS ###
enhanced perception (3)
improved artisan (3)
enthralling performance – artisan
nimble fingers
multi-tasking
eidetic sense memory
three-dimensional memory
linguistics
power throw (4)
missile mastery
### ACTIVE SKILLS ###
artisan 7(10)
(percussion) (+2)
perception 4(+3)
etiquette 2
computer 1
data search 1
con 1
Stealth Group 1
throwing weapons 4
dodge 4
### KNOWLEDGE SKILLS ###
music theory 2
ethnomusicology 1
literature-poetry 1
musical drum design 1
Denver music scene 1
Denver street gangs 1
chemistry 1
hide tanning 1
exotic woods 1
English N
Nahuatl 1
Cantonese 1
Pueblo 1
Spanish 1
Morse Code 1
Or’Zet 1 (learned from a team member on last run SRM02-04)
### GEAR (larger items) ###
percussion equipment – drum kit, bongos, djembe
commlink with upgrades, AR gloves, satellite link and some basic programs (Analyze, Browse, Edit)
computer toolkit
microtransceiver with subvocal mic
contact lenses and earbuds tricked out for enhanced perception
armour and various throwing weapons and various damage and smoke grenades
(and a holdout pistol if all else fails)
fake SIN and fake licenses
middle lifestyle
first aid supplies
Adept PC in SRM - player seeks comments, Bongo Slade-A kid with Magic and a dream
May 4 2007, 06:40 PM
