He was born to a Kyrgizstani whore of the Vory z Zakone, a nameless woman brought over to work as a sex slave in one of their many brothels. He doesn't know her name, doesn't know how he avoided being aborted. He certainly doesn't know who his father was, its doubtful anyone does. What he remembers is that he lived a somewhat quiet, benevolently neglected existence in a big, dark house filled with people. He remembers something terrible happening, though he is fuzzy on the details as he was very young, and he remembers being chased from the house and locked out. After a few miserable days of starvation he fell in with a gang of feral street kids of mixed origins where he learned the streets, learned to survive.

That is where he got the name Maus, one of the older kids gave it too him.

Life is hard for feral children, as hard as it is on anyone in the barrens. Meaner Ghouls prey on them for food, as do some of the wild critters, feral dog packs and the like. They survive without shelter, hunting rats for food, scavenging and stealing whatever they can. They are little better than smart animals, and many people, including gangs, consider them nothing more than vermin.

So it was that an Orkish gang known as the Dog Boys wiped out Maus's little pack one day, as these things go. Like a lot of gangs, they didn't mind taking in some of the older survivors as potential recruits. Sort of. The Dog Boys main activity was running dog fights. Dog fights, cock fights, rat fights... anything they could get people to sit down and watch, and bet on. The bloodier the better. They had no intention of adding some half starved, snot nosed pink brats to their gang, but making them fight each other? That was money.

Maus's first fights were against his own brothers. They were to the death. He was 10. Maybe. Later they pitted him against dogs. As long as he won, he stayed alive. As long as he made them money they treated him alright, like a prize animal. He lived in a cage, was trained, well fed, even rewarded for his victories. Training was inhuman, discipline was absolute, and Maus was a champion.

He survived four years, until Lonestar broke up a fight after learning some corp citizens, slumming for the bloodsports had been killed over gambling debts and came in with a vengence. Maus was still in the pit and he was sentenced to three years for aggravated assault at the Port Orchard Pit. He hadn't won yet or his sentence would have been much worse.

Once in the prison, essentially a giant walled yard with minimal facilities within and all important services built into the walls. The incarcerated Dog Boys wanted to keep Maus under their thumb, the Humanis prison gang wanted him to join their gang. Maus shocked everyone by simply refusing to do anything. That sort of thing never goes over well, and despite the fact that the guards really only cared that the prisoners didn't murder one another, sent someone to shank the upstart. Maus, operating on finely honed instinct killed him. Despite the Self Defense plea, he got 6 months of Solitary confinement with mandatory SIM immersion in a psychotherapy SIM. The plan was for 8 hours a day, but since no one was paid to care, he spent the entire period on a medical tray with his brain being pumped full of psychotropic commands.

Despite the brutality of the treatment, its the only reason Maus is able to function even remotely as a human being instead of a beast.

Once out the Guards recruited him for their own amusement to fight in the 'pit' in the prison yard. They 'taught' him, typically with shock rods, that obeying them, and not killing his opponents, were good things. The rest of the time he spent with the old yard birds, the lifers that no one cared about, who were beyond the prison gang set. They became, for a time, his new 'gang', they were just as happy to have the strapping young fighter to stand up for them against the occasional harassment.

After his three years were up he was released with a shiny new barcode tattoo of his criminal SIN on the back of his right hand, and utterly unequipped for the free world quickly found himself back in the barrens, where he fell in with the Brickhouse Boys, who wasted little time jumping in the bruiser. Not having much use for a pit fighter, they put him to work in one of their Chop Shops, where he put skills learned in the 'prisoner training program' to work for all the wrong reasons. One of his other duties was to go around and shake down Pimps for the BB's cut, and on multiple occasions to apply some pain to one who was a little to rough with his girls. Maus became a pretty regular face to the various working girls in that part of town, and a somewhat welcome one.

But Maus was a creature of habit, an animal learning to become a man by imitation, and he missed the fights. So while the rest of the Brickhouse Boys were partying it up, he could be found in gutted warehouses and overgrown lots fighting people for money, for a cut of the bets on him, or even because his 'manager', Gregor thought someone needed some hurt on them and was willing to pay for the priviledge. As long as Maus shared the wealth, the rest of the gang were cool with it.

Of course, like any ganger, Maus did lots of things, mostly things involving muscles and pain. Sometimes he did it because the gang needed muscle, sometimes he did it because Gregor told him to. He did home invasions, rumbled against other gangs with his brothers, and commonly was the goto guy to get rid of a body. That's when Maus got the chainsaw. Its also how he met 'Tock' a relatively intelligent ghoul who happened to speak Maus's mother tongue exclusively, and a great way to get rid of unwanted meat, no questions asked.


* NOTE* Nearly everything that follows from this point is written from the assumption that the Crash/Event that shattered most or all of the feeder gangs occur at some point in the past, as the game is already on going. I have no intention of stepping on GM toes, and if inappropriate it can be viewed as a guideline of how he WOULD act if other PC's did not get involved. The only thing I foresee needing a 'rewrite' if that view is taken is establishing a more solid historical link to Gracie, the 1/1 hooker contact, the work of moments.

However, even if that is the case, and the following is best ignored, I should point out that full description of the character physically and psychologically, along with a very brief summation of the core concept and theme of the character all follow at the end. *END NOTE*

It was during one of these side jobs that the Brickhouse Boys got burnt out. All he knows is that he came back to the chopshop where he lived and worked and found it a burnt out wreck. None of his calls to other members of the gang were answered, and no matter where he looked, he couldn't find them. Being a creature of near obsessive habit, along with being highly conditioned to look to his leaders for instructions, Maus fell into a routine of patrolling the Brickhouse Boys former turf, crashing with an endless sea of faceless prosituites or sympathetic souls. He also turned to Gregor for more work than ever, more fights. Not quite willing to accept Gregor as a 'leader', he managed to avoid attaching himself to the old man like a lost dog, barely.

One of Maus's regular stops is one of the few Brickhouse Boy 'family' he could find, Gracie. Her full time pimp was among the presumed dead, and she needed protection from the sharks. Maus needed 'family' for guidance and an uncomfortable arrangement formed. Maus seperates the world into to catagories, people who give him orders, and people he can Hurt. Gracie stands with one foot in each world... as the only surviving BB he can find, she is his default leader, as a hooker and incidentally someone who is utterly incapable of hurting him, she's definitely someone he could hurt. Worse, since Maus tends to mimic the behavior he sees, he knows he's supposed to order her around, maybe slap her some, and take her money. However, he doesn't know how to take charge, no one tells him when he's supposed to slap her, and when he does take her money its entirely at random because he never learned how pimps do it. And since Pimps are REALLY someone he's supposed to hurt, he's very uncomfortable trying to be one.

Gracie, for her part, doesn't like hooking much, doesn't want a pimp and doesn't much feel like taking care of a lummox, much less letting him take her hard earned money whenever he feels like it. On the other hand she does need him to keep the real bastards at bay, and occasionally, very occasionally, she feels sorry for him. And for all his faults he's far from the worst pimp she's had, though when he comes to her bleeding and unwilling or unable to fix himself up, or he spends the night with her, interfering with her life or work, she really tends to resent him.


Maus is a near OCD creature of habit. He has several identical pairs of pants, all carefully cleaned and pressed. Several identical belts and at least two identical pairs of highly shined black leather work boots. that is the utter sum of his wardrobe. Lacking any other motivation he rises each day at the same time (an hour before dawn) and walks the exact same route around the Brickhouse former territory, and at nearly the exact same time everyday, at the exact same spot outside the burnt out chop shop he freezes for less than a single second in mid stride before continuing on, usually ending in the same empty lot where he waits, unmoving, until Gregor, or anyone, shows to offer him work, a fight, or even simple coversation. If no one shows he waits until the sun rises (or a close approximation, this is Seattle after all) before moving on.

Through the day he'll typically make the same stops, talk to the same people if they are there, even repeat verbatim the simple conversations he has.

It is important to realize that this is not an actual compulsion, but simply the only way he knows how to act in the absence of family, in the absence of a leader figure(s). It is a holding pattern. And it is not as inflexible as compulsion. At some point in the day he'll decide to make arrangements for the night's lodgings. At some point in the day one of the dozens of nameless children in the hood will swing by with a couple of dead rats or a cat for his food in return for money or a favor. He'll do odd jobs that people ask of him, ranging from the benign (fixing a car, putting shingles on a roof) to the diabolic (torturing a man to death for whatever reason), though he knows enough never to do it for 'free'. As lives go, its remarkably similar to the life he lived with his brothers.

It should be noted that he is almost impossible to provoke into random violence. A direct attack will earn a direct response, and orders are obeyed as a general rule, but even the greatest provocation only spurs him to look around for someone to tell him what to do. Even when violence is expected of him he will wait, straining at a leash only he can see until someone says 'go'. Anyone will do, its the permission he needs. Luckily almost all organized fights have someone to start them...


Maus is a distinctive figure wherever he goes. Tall enough to look a grown Ork in the eye and muscular enough to arm wrestle them, he is a huge slab of carved meat. The 'Star' electrochemically removed all of his hair as part of their delousing program, and he never thought to have it reversed. A nearly pure protein diet as a child, and the 'training' the Dog Boys gave him ensured he grew up big. He looks to be about 20 or so, though he doesn't know his own age, and depending on the angle could pass as any number of ethnic types. Kyrgiz are swarthy asiatic types, and whatever his father was levied it enough that he could be just about anything. Not that its uncommon in 2070, or in the barrens in particular. So nobody much worries about where this 'not quite dark, not quite asian' human came from, they hear his thick russian accent and that's all they care about. Aside from a shockingly small collection of battle scars, he has only two distinctive marks: the Criminal SIN barcode on his right hand, and a vulgar phrase in cyrillic down his left forearm.
He is moderately handsome and graceful for his bulk.

His look, as it is unchanging, is pretty recognizable as well. He wears heavy duty work pants, baggy to allow for easy movement, belted (black synthleather and steel buckle) and shiney black stomper boots. That's it. Regardless of rain or cold or even fights. His eyes are often hidden behind mirrored shades, and when he's fighting or doing such nasty business as home invasions he'll strap on a face mask that looks like a post industrial hockey mask made of ballistic resin and hammered iron. These days he is rarely found without his truly ancient duffle bag, so old its original color is hidden entirely under greasy oily stains, black and wretchedly filthy. It contains exactly three baseball bats (one of wood, one of aluminum and one of polycarbonate resin... added to the game in 2034...), his favorite weapon, and one he is a near master of. He can occasionally wax poetic about the virtues of each material, the sound they make against bone, and so forth, but he prefers to reserve that for when it is needed. He also carries his chainsaw, great for doors, rough 'chop jobs' on cars when speed is more important than value, and the turning the occasional body into ghoul chow. it also has some plastic bags, both empty and full of his very neatly pressed pants.

It also has his battered old Warhawk and a single bullet. This is purely a 'motivational tool'. He has no idea if it even works, but he does know that making a show out of slotting the bullet, spinning the chamber and pointing it is wonderful at getting people to do what he wants. He has never thought that he might use it to actually shot someone deliberately.

He speaks slowly, with great deliberation, and with a lot of clipped words, particularly in English. In Russian, he is still slow and careful but the words flow quite a bit smoother. In some ways his English is like his movements, lacking extra flare and very deliberate. Maus still has a habit of keeping his movements to a minimum to avoid 'discipline'. He will never move his arm if just his hand is enough. This only looks a little odd. In fights he uses bursts of movement alternating with stillness as he waits for an opening or an attack, though he becomes almost balletic in the ring when he does move. He is utterly sure of himself and fearless.

When fighting unarmed, Maus is a pure grappler. Only rarely does he actually hit or kick anyone, and then only to soften them up. He has been known, when the occasion calls for it, to simply fold his opponent up until their bones break, up to and including necks and spines. With a ball bat, or other club, he is a surgeon, taking them apart with precision developed over hundreds or even thousands of fights.


The Character was started from the pure concept of 'pitbull on a leash'. Those four words fairly sum up the essentials of the character. As the concept was fleshed out, and the character written, a theme was added. That theme is easily reduced to 'The Animal learns to become a Man'. As this is already MUCH longer than I anticipated, I will leave off trying to explain every single facet of the character as built in an earlier post (why first Impression, why put points in Edge, why Incompetent with Computers and what does that mean...) unless asked to.