Arlighty, here is the latest - and hopefully final - version of Kiara complete with backstory. Somehow, Sarge doesn't seem as appropriate anymore - but I can't really settle on a good nick-name, so I hope someone will give her one that sticks in-play.
Description/personality
[ Spoiler ]
Gunnery Sergeant Kiara Godard at first glance seems like an odd sort to be a mercenary... Its not really the way she looks... she is 1.8 meters tall (taller than the average human, shorter than the average ork or elf) with an athletic build that visibly places her around 95 kilograms. However, while the size of her build is only slightly more muscled than the average person, her muscular structure seems more sinewy and dense than normal. She wears her auburn red hair in a neck-length perm swept back away from her face. She looks to be a human in her mid twenties and has pale white skin, classic saxon features (slightly upturned nose, high cheek bones, small chin etc), and cyber-eyes that usually appear to shift in hue from baby-blue to a glowing blood-red depending on her mood, but her porcelein smile disturbingly reveals upper and lower fangs hidden behind those classic features - and her well manicured, usually painted nails are thicker and more claw-like than they should be.
As has been said, she looks the part of the mercenary, but it is her manner that makes her seem an unlikely candidate. Kiara is nearly always smiling and seems inordinately nice - more like a social worker or church youth group leader than a mercenary - the type who treats almost everybody like a friend. Further, she seems to be a very Christian individual - quoting the bible and turning the other cheek in a 'what would Jesus do' sort of way. She usually wears old NATO-style fatigues with priest's smock and collar visible beneath the jacket. Her attitude and collar of course have led to a number of nicknames for her such as 'Lil Soldier, Baby Girl, Girl Scout, Chaplain, Madre, and so on.
Those preconceptions other mercs have almost always change once they are out in the field with her. She wears heavy mil-spec armor as if it were as light as normal clothing and carries a heavy machine gun (nick-named the 'Breath of God,' with the Psalm 78:39 engraved on its barrel: He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return) and has an Ares Vigorous Assault Cannon (nick-named the 'Hand of God,' with Samuel 1:22 in gold filigree along its massive barrel: From the blood of the slain, from the flesh of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, the sword of Saul did not return unsatisfied) slung on her back. She of course also has an automatic pistol in a leg-holster, but it is exceedingly rare that she uses it. Though coated with poly-reuthenium compound for stealth purposes, when visible her armor is a sky-blue with a gold cross emblazoned over the chest-plate with the words "Jesus Christ, Our Lord GOD, is in Heaven." While during the day she keeps her helmet sealed, at night she leaves the plate below the visor open. It shortly becomes apparent that she only eats uncooked meat and seems to be much more alert at night. Once the battle has started, her manner bears little resemblance to her normal personality - the 'what would Jesus do' mentality replaced by old testament style wrath, and the friendly disposition replaced by that of a drill sergeant. She tends to lay waste to the enemy with her heavy weapons - seeming to enjoy the bloodbath, and once they get close she visciously engages them in melee - often going for their throat or heart and sometimes beastially devouring parts her prey on the spot. In short, she fights like a monster - with a supernatural quickness and strength incongruent with her physical size... and unwilling to stop until every last enemy has been slain...
After seeing that, the other mercs usually start calling her a different nickname - Sarge, Jackal, or Paladin to name a few... though some keep calling her the old names - just with a more ironic tone.
Background
[ Spoiler ]
Kiara Godard was abandoned at St. Joseph's Children's Home in Louisiana in late 2038 - she was only a few months old, and the note left with her claimed her to be named Kiara - and that her parents were Irish Catholics who would return for her later. They never did, so Kiara (a Gaelic name that means both Darkness and Saint) was given the last name 'Godard' (Gaelic for Servant of God) by the priests and nuns who raised her. She was assumed to be human at first, showing no signs of metahuman traits, but she developed quickly and was discovered to be an Ork with unusually human-like features when she turned five and grew in small tusks that were mostly hidden by her lower lip (some of the meaner children took to calling her 'fat lip' because of that, but the small tusks were her only distinctively Ork-like feature).
Kiara was a 'handful' as the nuns would say, as she would rarely back down from confrontation - especially if someone questioned the bible... she grew to be fiercely religious, and at the age of six had already declared to the head priest of the orphanage that she wanted to be a priest... He, of course, was leery of the idea (more fearing that the child would find only disappointment than disliking her chosen path) - female priests were still rare (only having been allowed for a year at the time), but an Ork woman becoming a priest was laughably implausible... so - knowing that the predisposed nature of her metatype would make her fit for military service - the Father persuaded her that rather than spending most of her life seeking a college degree and then attending seminary (since that would take the majority of the Ork life-span) she should join the military and file to become a Chaplain - as that required nothing more than faith and a recommendation from a Priest.
Kiara took the father's words to heart and filed to join the military at the age of 13 (using the military's age requirement excemption for Orks and Trolls - though she got a weird look from the recruiter who had at first thought her to be a human in her late teens to early twenties). Over the next four years She served in border-fighting against Aztlan with distinction as a UCAS Marine Artilleryman and managed to successfully petition for status as a combative-Chaplain. During her times of leave, she'd always return to the orphanage to help out. One such time, just as her tour of duty was ending in 2055, she was greeted upon her return to the orthanage by an odd priest - who only identified himself by saying that he was from Rome... The strange priest asked her a great many questions about her faith in God and the Vatican - pushing her hard by questioning how a soldier could truly follow the path of Christ - until she lost her temper and started angrily quoting scripture to him, saying "It is God's work we do, fighting Aztlan is a crusade - Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, for thy possession the ends of the earth, thou shalt break them with a rod of iron thou shalt dash them in peices like a potters vessel, be wise now therefore o ye kings, be instructed ye judges of the earth, serve the lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are they that put their trust in him!" Seemingly satisfied with her answer, the strange priest informed her that he had a task for her, identifying himself as Father Maximilian Arturo - a representative of a small group of individuals like-minded to her. He asked her for her help with a problem - his group needed to send someone with some shadowrunners on a job to make sure they didn't try a doublecross... she agreed, and on his instruction joined a shadowrunning team making a strike on an Aztlan prison camp to free a group of Catholic priests who had been arrested for conducting mass. By the end of the raid, half of the team was dead and the camp was burned to the ground, but the Priests made it out. When the last two runners demanded more money than originally agreed and threatened to kill the priests (assuming Kiara was a runner and would go along with it), Kiara shot both of them in the back - as ordered by Father Arturo.
She continued to do mercenary work for Father Arturo - and over time she accumulated enough money to afford extensive augmentation. She also became quite adept at leading small tactical units. In 2061, she was to be officially ordained as a Priestess - her childhood dream - as the Church needed more Priests to deal with the religous quandaries the world was facing in light of SURGE. Ironically, during the ordainment ceremony (performed by an awakened Bishop), Kiara herself SURGEd when the Bishop laid hands upon her. Even as she felt the pain of the change, she continued the ceremony - losing consciousness and being hospitalized afterwards. Her SURGE involved the formation of irregular sub-dermal deposits under her skin in a manner that gave her a predatory visage, compounded by the fact that her tusks receded to replace her lower canines as fangs while her upper canines elongated into fangs as well... and she became less able to think clearly in the day - more like a nocturnal creature. The doctors helped regularize the internal deposits and return her features to a more standard human norm by implanting orthoskin mesh (donated by a less lucky vistim of SURGE who had died from the change) under her skin. Immediately following her recovery, she learned of the New Islamic Jihad... she decided to join NATO as an artillery Gunnery Sergeant and Chaplain. She served in NATO's contingent in Jerusalem until 2064 when the region stabilized - becoming in the interim an expert at hunting Shedim.
She was discharged from NATO in 2064 as her term of service ended, but she stayed in the Middle East hunting remaining Shedim and other creatures - as well as pocket cells of jihadists - often tracking them across the desert - making quite a bit of money off of the bounties that had been placed upon the creatures. By 2066, she was starting to slow down - feeling the effects of age... even if she didn't look like an Ork, she aged like one, so her thirty years wore on her as if she were almost sixty. She spent nearly all the money she'd made hunting Shedim to undergp a Leonization treatment in 2066, using the genetic sample taken by the CAS military when she enlisted at age 13. The results were painful and required hospitalization as the SURGE features reasserted themselves. Following that debacle, the newly reinvigorated Kiara was hired as an escort to two Priests who had been charged with traveling to Africa to assist a Catholic mission with troubles from a band of fighters led by an African witch-doctor. The witch-doctor was leading an effort of ethnic cleansing, and the mission had provided sanctuary to a number of metahumans... but the witch-doctor's people attacked the fortified mission repeatedly attempting to kill all within it.
En route to the mission, the trio took a helicopter because the Mission was on a mountain deep in the jungle - meant to help convert a population that had been essentially untouched by 'civilization.' Their helicopter was hit by a LAW missile and went down in the jungle... one of the priests was killed instantly on impact along with the pilot, the other made it out with his legs broken. Kiara was thrown from the wreckage and impaled in the gut by one of the chopper's blades. They were quickly found by the priests of the mission, but Kiara needed surgery or she would bleed out as soon as the blade was removed. The only surgeon at the mission was an Asamondan ghoul who had been traveling when the attacks began and sought shelter within the mission. He warned that were he to operate, it was likely that her weakened body would sucumb to the HMHVV strain he carried. Kiara consented, saying "If it is God's will that I be accursed, then so be it - I will not let a failing body keep me from fulfilling my charge." Within an excruciatingly painful week, she had fully recovered, but had also been transformed into a hidious ghoul... the priest who had come with her almost killed her, but she perfectly recited the Lord's Prayer - in Latin - proving she was still in control of her faculties. Not long after that, the witch-doctor's men attacked again. Kiara and the Vatican priest wiped out the attackers and took one prisoner. Kiara's interogation of the prisoner led to the discovery of the location of the witch-doctor's headquarters. Kiara ripped out the prisoner's throat after getting the information... but as tempted as she was she refused to eat.
Of the two, Kiara was the more experienced survivalist - she and the priest went on foot with minimal gear (their armor and most of their gear had been destroyed in the crash, leaving them with minimal munitions and only camouflage suits for armor... Kiara was able to salvage her HMG by repairing the damage, but only a single belt of ammo, and after that they were down to pistols). The two found the camp and assaulted it at nightfall. They wiped out the witchdoctor's men, but found that the witchdoctor and his last two men had barricaded themselves in his office. Kiara and the priest went for them, but the witchdoctor summoned a spirit to engage them. The priest managed to dispel it, but was so drained that he collapsed. The witchdoctor attempted to run, and took a child as a human shield. Kiara, enraged, lept upon them and threw the child to safty as she ripped the witchdoctor apart with her bare hands - disembowling him and devouring part of him while he was still alive before she remembered herself. When the priest came to, he found her covered in blood praying - the witchdoctor's remains painting the walls of the room. She finished her prayer and picked up the Witch-Doctor's medicine stick - her flesh burning where it touched her - and she splintered it into fine pieces.
The priest took her - willingly - back to Rome to be incarcerated while the clergy decided if she would be allowed to remain a priestess of the Catholic Church. To test her worthiness to remain alive in God's service, they put her through a series of trials. First they required her to go through a torturous ordeal by which they mutated the virus in her system to no longer be transmissable - an excrutiatingly painful process during which she was denied any sedative or painkiller. After that, she was required to write a theological thesis reconciling her new form with her faith in an acceptable manner. Then she was required to place a Geas upon her new magical abilities that would be broken should she fail to daily recite the lord's prayer in Latin. For the fourth trial, they locked her in a dungeon alone for over a week with a corpse - requiring her to meditate on God's harmony and resist her hunger to not devour the flesh until they returned for her. In her final trial, she placed her clawed hand on an ancient bible held by an Arch-Bishop and gave an Oath before God to obey the tenets and edicts of the Church... had her flesh burned or had she been unable to make the oath, she would have been killed... after much deliberation, it was decided that she be given special dispensation to continue to present herself as a priestess - though she could not preside over a parish - and they required her to recieve cosmetic surgery returning her to her pre-infection appearance.
By the time all of that had been completed, it was 2068 and Kiara had been incarcerated for a year. Freshly biosculpted, she was given a Criminal Tuscan SIN as a National in order to protect her rights as an infected.
In 2068, Kiara returned to Africa seeking work as a mercenary. While many groups thought her excentric with how zealously religious she was in spite of willingness to do mercenary work, she quickly proved herself more than capable in the art of warfare and has been serving in the company of mercenaries ever since.
Basics:
[ Spoiler ]
Sgt. Kiara Godard
Metatype: Ork (originally human-looking) Ghoul (Biosculpted to look pre-infection)
Sex: Female
Nuyen: (4d6)*100
Lifestyle: 1 month Medium
Physical Damage track: 13 boxes
Stun Damage track: 11 boxes
Armor (in Milspec suit): 30/28
Armor (in Camo-suit): 15/13
Armor (without worn armor): 7/7
attributes
[ Spoiler ]
Body 10 (13 for damage resistance)
Agility 5 (9)
Reaction 7 (10)
Strength 8 (12, 15 in armor)
Charisma 3
Intuition 5
Logic 3
Edge 4
Magic 6
Initiation Grade: 5
Essence 1.05
Initiative 12 (15)
Initiative Pass 1 (4)
Skills
[ Spoiler ]
Athletics Group: 4
Outdoors Group (broken): 2
Survival: 4
Automatics: 2
Heavy Weapons (HMGs): 6 +2
Astral Combat: 2
Close Combat Group (broken): 1
Unarmed Combat (Pankration): 6 +2
Intimidation (Interrogation): 3 +2
Influence Group (broken): 2
Leadership: 3
Outdoors Group (broken): 2
Survival: 4
Armorer (Heavy Weapons): 4 +2
Assensing: 3
Infiltration: 4
Knowledge Skills and Languages
[ Spoiler ]
Christian Theology: 5
African Religions: 1
Shedim: 1
Militaries: 1
English: N
Arabic: 2
Latin: 4
Racial/SURGE Qualities
[ Spoiler ]
Infected: Ghoul
10 Point SURGE
Celerity
Dermal Deposits
Fangs
Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell)
Dual natured
Mild Sunlight Allergy
Dietary Requirment (Metahuman Flesh)
Nocturnal
Positive and Negative Qualities
[ Spoiler ]
Adept
Biocompatability (Bioware)
Human Looking (lost when ghouled, regained via biosculpting)
Criminal SINner (Ghouls with SINs are automatically considered criminal)
Common Moderate Allergy (Non-Christian religious icons)
Combat Monster
Ordeal Qualities
[ Spoiler ]
Infertile Infected
Records on File (Vatican)
Geas (Ritual: must daily recite the Lord's Prayer in Latin)
Oath (to Catholic Church)
Thesis (A copy is in her possession, and copies are on file with the Roman Catholic Church)
Metamagic Abilities
[ Spoiler ]
Masking
Adept Centering
Attunement (HMG) (Attuned to 'Breath of God')
Attunement (Assault Cannon) (Attuned to 'Hand of God')
Somatic Control
Adept Powers
[ Spoiler ]
Improved Reflexes 3
Mystic Armor 2
Resources
[ Spoiler ]
Cyber/Bio
[ Spoiler ]
Cybereyes rating 4
Flare Compensation
Low-Light Vision
Smartlink
Thermographic Vision
Vision Enhancment 3
Vision Magnification
Eye Light System
Alphaware Orientation system
Alphaware Datajack
Titanium bone Lacing
Pain Editor
Biosculpting to look pre-infection
2nd Hand Orthoskin 3
Muscle Augmentation 4
2nd Hand Muscle Toner 4
2nd Hand Platelet Factories
2nd Hand Synthacardium 3
Armor and Software
[ Spoiler ]
Heavy Military Armor
Military Helmet
Rating 6 commlink upgrade
Gas Mask
Sim Rig
Environmental Adaptation (Desert)
Gyromount
Gel Packs
Armor mod 4
Thermal Damping 6
Strength Upgrade 3
Ruthenium Polymer Coating
Camouflage Suit (this is her old NATO uniform)
Datasoft 6 Modern Warfare and Tactics
Datasoft 6 The Jimmy Hendrix Collection
Datasoft 6 Compendium of UnHoly Monsters and Heresies
Datasoft 6 Bible and Theological Interpretations
Analyze 6
Browse 6
Encrypt 6
Empathy Sensor Software 6
Weapons and Ammo
[ Spoiler ]
Survival knife
Sword
Ares Crusader
Internal Smartlink
Integral sound suppressor
Extreme Environment 1
quick-draw holster
normal ammo - 100 rounds
gel ammo - 40 rounds
Extra Clips - 6
Ruhrmetall SF20 Heavy Machinegun (Breath of God)
External Smartlink
Chameleon Coating
Foregrip
Personalized Grip
Extreme Environment 1
Custom Look 1
Regular Ammo 2500 rounds (in 250 round belts)
10 Belt Ammo Drums
Ares Vigorous Assault Cannon (Hand of God)
External Smartlink
Chameleon Coating
Firing Selection Change (SA)
Personalized Grip
Extreme Environment 1
Custom Look 1
sling
Assault Cannon ammo - 360 rounds
29 Extra clips
Vehicles and other Equipment
[ Spoiler ]
Thundercloud Morgan
Extreme Environment (Desert)
Backpack
Survival kit
Desert Survival kit
Desert Tent
Thermal Air Bag
Parachute
30 Rations (raw meat)
Armorer Kit
Respirator 6
Medkit 6
Miniwelder
Subvocal Mike
Micro-Transiever 6
Tag Eraser
White Noise Generator 4
Contacts
[ Spoiler ]
Father Arturo: L4, C6 - the priest who recruited Kiara at one time to do mercenary work of benefit to Christendom. A kindly man most of the time, but of a wrathful disposition when the word of God is not heeded. Through his position in the church, he has many connections globally - and he is Kiara's most trusted friend.
)
. Thinking about it where almost like a space marine squad bar the mages (there a bit squishy).
And one wouldn't want that