I sent in my character sheet and 20 questions a couple of minutes ago, but I wanted to post it up here too so that anyone else could check it out also if they want.
Elyas Mingan aka Old Wolf:
[ Spoiler ]
Name: Elyas Mingan aka Old Wolf
Metatype: Human
Attributes: -200 BP
Special Attributes: -40 BP
B 4 C 2 Edge 3
A 3 I 5 Init/IP 8/1
R 3 L 3 Ess 6
S 3 W 5 Mag 4
Qualities: +10 BP
Magician (Druidic Tradition, Wild Druid)
Mentor Spirit (Wolf, +2 Combat Spells, +2 Beast Spirits)
Restricted Gear
Sensitive System
Moderate Addiction (Snuff)
Nano Intolerance
Mild Foci Addiction
Skills: -132 BP
Spellcasting (Combat) 3
Counterspelling 4
Summoning (Beast) 2
Clubs (Staves) 2
Blades (Knives) 1
Athletics Group 1
Enchanting (Artificing) 2
Survival (Forest) 2
Tracking (Forest) 1
Navigation (Forest) 1
Etiquette (Magical) 1
Animal Handling (Canines) 1
Pilot Ground (Wheeled) 1
Perception 1
Assenssing 2
Knowledge Skills: 24 Free
Zoology 3
Botany 3
Geology 3
Paracritters 3
Canadian Wilderness 2
Smuggling Routes 2
Wilderness Refuges 2
Languages:
English N
French 3
Algonquian 3
Spells: -15 BP
Manabolt
Stunbolt
Detect Life
Heal
Wolf Form
Foci Bonding: -4 BP
Gear: 153,130 Nuyen Spent, -31 BP
Force 4 Power Focus (Staff)
Combat Trained Wolf
Thundercloud Morgan
-Extreme Environment Adaptation (Snow)
2 Survival Knives
Cougar Fineblade (Long)
Armor Jacket (Tribal Style)
-Insulation Rating 6
Novatech Airware w/ Novatech Navi OS
FTL Matrixware Net Wizard Program Bundle
-Analyze 3, Browse 3, Command 1, Edit 2, Purge 3
Pocket Hacker Bundle
-Agent( Pilot 3, Browse 3, Exploit 3, Stealth 3)
Satellite Link
AR Gloves
Fake SIN Rating 4
Fake Talismonger License Rating 4
Goggles Rating 6
-Image Link
-Vision Enhancement 3
-Vision Magnification
-Low-Light
-Flare Compensation
Earbuds Rating 3
-Audio Enhancement 3
-Select Sound Filter 3
Survival Kit
10 Light sticks
Low Light Flashlight
Rating 6 Medkit
Assaying Kit
Force 4 Magical Lodge
4 Rating 4 Stim Patches
Lifestyle:
Comforts - 2
Entertainment - 2
Necessities - 1
Neighborhood - 1
Security - 3
+1 Homegrown Farming
+1 No Neighbors
+1 Well Made
+1 Workplace
+2 Rural Home
-1 Household Gremlins
-1 Green Plan
+250 Nuyen/Month for Wolf
4050 nuyen/month, 1 month Paid
Contacts: -12 BP
Aurora- Talismonger Connection 3, Loyalty 2
The Frog- Fixer Connection 3, Loyalty 1
Whiskey Jack- Bar Owner Connection 2, Loyalty 1
Character Quiz : 20 Questions
1. Where does your character come from, what is his lineage, who were his parents, and what did he inherit from them?
Elyas is from a tribal group of Mahicans, living in one the barrens in the Quebec sprawl. His father, David Mingan, was involved with smuggling and drug running into and out of the sprawl, while his mother, Sascha, was a French prostitute in the barrens. Elyas has his father's tan skin and straight black hair, and his mother's sharp nose and blue eyes. Elyas was born in 2035, and his mother took care of him unwillingly until she and his father died in 2045 during a police raid of their home. Elyas was taken in by Child Protective Services and placed in an orphanage in Quebec. He stayed at the orphanage until he was released when he turned 18.
2. Assuming they can speak, what would each of your character's parents say about him?
Elyas' father would probably be proud of him for making it on his own, for getting out of Quebec, and getting back to the land. His mother never really cared for him, she didn't even want to have him in the first place, except that Elyas' father wanted her to keep the child. She hated him until the day she died and probably still does.
3. Pick a few events from recent Shadowrun history and ask where the character was at the time, what does he remember about the event, and what was he doing at the time?
Elyas was only really effected by a few of the major events that occured during his lifetime. The first was in 2053, the same year he got out of the orphanage, when a massive United Oil rig spilled tons of oil into the Boston Harbor. He didn't actually care about it at first, until a girl he met got him involved in a Eco-Activist group in Quebec. This led him to meeting up with Alan Ryman, a Druidic magician that told Elyas that he had magical potential. Then four years later, in 2057, Dunkelzhan was assasinated in the UCAS. Not a citizen of the UCAS, Elyas wasn't as sad about the Great Dragon's death as others were, but when Dunkelzhan's will was revealed, Elyas became much more interested in the Big D. He never got anywhere besides talking about rumors of the dragon's hoard with others in the shadow community, but they were some fun conversations.
4. How did your character get into shadowrunning, and why did he take that path?
Elyas joined the shadows because he didn't see any other path for himself in life. He was part of a Eco-Activist group that was quickly becoming a Radical Eco group, tying itself up with the shadows more and more every year. Elyas learned to use his magic and became a more important person for the group, an integral part of many of their runs. But, one day, he just couldn't take the drama of the group anymore and he cut his ties with them, instead joining up with some professional runners that he had met during his time with the group.
5. What is your character's living space like, and what has he added or changed to make it his own?
Elyas lives on a small farm in the Ottawa River Valley, in a house that he is paying the mortgage off on. It is completely off the grid, running on solar and wind power, collecting rain water for the house. He has his own garden outside the house, and a converted barn turned into his magical lodge. It is lacking in a number of comforts of civilization, but he likes the place nonetheless.
6. What does your character believe in, what are his convictions (if any), and why does he hold them?
Elyas still believes in the sanctity of nature, despite leaving the Eco group he was part of. He won't participate in a run that will do undue damage to the environment, but he doesn't have a vendetta against Corporations that have hurt the environment. Elyas simply believes that each man must do his part, but it isn't his job to make them do so.
7. What do you dislike most about your character's personality?
Elyas is usually unduly crass with those that he is not close with, often making him come across as uncouth and arrogant. Elyas is not too used to dealing with people, because outside of dealing with other runners on runs, the only contact he usually has with other living beings is with his companion wolf, Algernon. He also smokes a ridiculous amount of Snuff cigarettes, stocking up on cartons of them whenever he is in town.
8. Which of the Big Ten does your character hold in the highest regard, and which does he like the least, and why?
Mostly due to their humanist work and environmently friendly projects, Elyas is quite a fan of the Evo Corporation. That might also be because Evo the near to best snowmobile bike on the planet, a near essential in this part of the world.
On the opposite end of the spectrum has got to be Aztechnology for him. Between all of the rumors he has heard about them in the shadows and the front they present to the rest of the world, Elyas doesn't trust them in the slightest.
9. What is the story with your character and his contacts?
Firstly there is Aurora, who is probably the most beautiful woman that Elyas has ever met, and a great magician to boot. She is a professional Talismonger living on the outskirts of Quebec. She makes fetishes, foci, and talismans for a living, and Elyas is her go to man in the field for collecting Telesma for her. A gorgeous red-haired woman in her late twenties, Aurora is the ideal woman in Elyas' eyes and he would do almost anything to make her see him as something more than a business aquaintance.
Next is The Frog, a hefty green skinned, slightly slimy, French Troll, who works as a Fixer in Quebec. Elyas met The Frog after leaving his eco group and jumping into the shadows, and The Frog has so far been a honest and stand up fixer, although Elyas always wishes that The Frog would get him so more work.
Lastly is Whiskey Jack, one of Elyas' only metahuman friends in his neck of the woods. Whiskey Jack is a former shadowrunner who retired to open a bar on the road between Quebec and the Algonkian-Manitou Council, providing a nice stop over point for travels, a good meeting place that is out of the way, and an establishment that makes a damn fine steak. Whiskey Jack is also a seven foot tall Minotaur with a combat axe and a shotgun behind the bar, so it also draws in quite a crowd just for him. His bar is named after himself, Whiskey Jack's Bar & Grill.
10. It's Sunday morning, and your character has no commitments until tomorrow afternoon. What does he do for the day?
Elyas would probably do what he does every other day that he has no commitments, wake up around 10 AM, water his garden, make some breakfast for himself and Algernon, meditate by the small self-built pond behind his farm, and then go out for the day, trying to hunt down some Telesma for Aurora, and hunt down some food for himself. At the end of the day he would bring back whatever he could catch (magic killed elk means you don't have to pick out any buckshot) and cook it up for dinner before heading out to his magical lodge and working on making some of his own fetishes and talismans to sell.
11. How did your character learn his skills, and how did he develop them to those levels?
Elyas learned the ins and outs of magic, sorcery, assenssing, and summoning from his former mentor, Alan Ryman, a druid who lived in Quebec. He taught Elyas to sling spells, and how to counter them, as well as the basics to summoning spirits, but Elyas had no patience for learning the intricate details of ritual work or spirit binding. And Banishing? Elyas laughed when he was offered the chance to learn how to do that. "Why banish them why I can so easily disrupt them with a spell or another spirit?"
Alan also taught Elyas how to use a staff, the traditional weapon of the druids. Elyas took the staff naturally and he was quickly able to surpass some veterans with his staff skills, although he was not nearly as good with any other kind of club weapon.
When Elyas was a boy in the orphanage he found his first weapon, an old hunting knife in a cracked leather sheath. Elyas thought it was the coolest thing ever, and he quickly learned how to wield it without hurting himself. His skills with a knife came in handy during the more rebellious parts of his teenage years, and although he has focused more on using a staff now than a knife, he hasn't forgotten the basics of knife fighting.
Elyas' athletic skills come from some time in the various mandatory athletic programs he was a part of during high school. While he was never very proficient at them, they have saved his hoop more than once on a run, so he is quite glad to have taken those classes then.
Elyas studied a lot about nature (Zoology, Botany, Geology, Paracritters) while he was a part of his eco group and he found it all quite interesting, delving more into it than many of the others in his group, learning more of the academic side than only the propanganda that the group leaders fed to everybody. He then decided to take it a step further and actually learn to survive and be part of the wilds, teaching himself how to survive off the land, how to track creatures in the forest, and how to navigate by the sun, the moon, and the stars. His time spent travelling in the wilds taught him a lot about the Canadian Wilderness, as well as led him to accidentally discovering a number of Smuggling Routes through the forests, and Wilderness Refuges in areas off of the beaten path.
Elyas met Aurora many years after joining the shadows, contracting her to make his staff into a potent power focus for him. Interested in how she enchanted objects, Elyas begged her to teach him the basics of the art of Enchanting. She agreed, hoping to make him into a someone who could collect Telesma for her, and thus began their working relationship.
A couple of years ago, when Elyas moved into the farm where he is living now, he was out hunting Telesma when he came across the corpse of a femal wolf. Stopping to see if she had any useable pieces left on her, Elyas instead found that a living pup of hers nearby. Taking the pup in, Elyas trained the wolf as his companion, learning how to train the animal better as it grew.
12. Is there a moral limit that your character enforces on the jobs he takes, and in what shadow work would he refuse to engage?
Elyas refuses to be a part of any run that will cause undue harm to the environment.
13. What drew your character to their particular paradigm, how does it effect the way he views the world and his magic, how does it translate into choice of mentor spirit, and how does it affect the appearance of the spirits he conjures?
Elyas became a druid and follows the Druidic Tradition because that was the tradition that he was taught in, he can't think of any other way to follow besides the one he is on. Being a Druid did however bring him closer to being eco sensitive, and viewing the world as one large living thing; this was particularly enhanced the first time that he journeyed onto the astral plane and he saw the constant glow of the Earth below him. Elyas views his magic as coming up through him from the Earth, channeling the power of the planet through himself. The spirits that Elyas summons all appear either part of the Earth somehow or as living beings, animal spirits of the Earth.
Elyas never thought about a Mentor Spirit until he encountered the wolf pup, Algernon, in the forest. As Algernon grew up, Elyas' connection the Spirit of Wolf grew, with Algernon becoming in some ways like Elyas, and Elyas becoming in some ways like Algernon.
14. How did your character come to have the enhancements he has, how were they paid for, and what motivated the choices he made?
Elyas has no 'ware in his body and he doesn't plan on getting any. Tested when he was placed in the orphanage, Elyas learned young that his body would not easily accept enhancement. This made him a less attractive child for adoption, which is why he was at the orphanage until he turned 18 and was kicked out. Because of this, Elyas never got any implants, because he never wanted to be like the people who would not accept him into their lives.
15. What does you character think of ordinary life, mainstream culture, and those who abide by it?
Elyas never had a chance to lead a normal life, or to afford anything that could be called either mainstream or cultured. This made him cynical to ordinary life, almost ensuring that he would never be part of that type of lifestyle, even though he always wished that he could have been. Elyas is secretly jealous of those who lead normal lifes, living so easily in their arcologies, and shopping in designer stores, but he knows deep down that they would never accept him into their flock.
16. If your character had a lingering nightmare or a deep-rooted fear, what would it be, and why does he find it so terrifying?
Due to all the years that Elyas spent in the orphanage, he is very afraid that people will never love him and that he will always be alone. This is in part why he rarely socializes with people, for fear that they will abandon him and won't accept him like so many others have done so before.
17. What is your character's 'sacred object' or 'close one', and how did they come to be so important to him?
Elyas is particularly attached to his Power Focus staff, it is his most valuable and prized possession and he doesn't go anywhere without it. He doesn't realize it, but he has slowly become more and more attached it, using it more often than not, and is starting to develop an addiction to the power that it provides.
Outside of his staff, Elyas is very close with Algernon, his wolf companion. Algernon helped him develop his connection to the Spirit of Wolf, and he is also the only living thing that accepts Elyas for who he is without any judgements.
18. What did you character want to become when he was a child, and what are his goals?
Elyas wanted to be like his father when he was young, until the cops burst into their house and killed his parents in a hail of gunfire. Then the only thing that Elyas knew was that he didn't want to be his parents and that he didn't want to be a cop. He never thought about what he wanted to do with his life while he was in the orphanage, in fact he actively tried not to do so. It wasn't until he joined his eco group that he started to think about the future. His current goal in life to pay off his farm, harvest lots of Telesma for Aurora so she notices him, and to survive in a eco-friendly way.
19. What does you character look like, and what inspired his choices?
Elyas is 6' 2" and weighs around 165 lbs, with a thin, lean muscled frame. His hair extends to the small of his back, and is straigh black, though he is starting to get grey at his temples and some streaks of grey throughout. He has dark tan skin, piercing blue eyes, and a sharp hawked nose, which almost dominates his face when he is clean shaven, which he often is not. His hands are weathered and his voice is rough from years of chain smoking. He has a single golden hoop earring in his left ear, a sun tattoo on the back of his right hand, and a moon tattoo on the back of his left hand. His clothing reflects his heritage, mainly tribal leathers and blue jeans with work boots. Most of his stuff his recycled materials and earth friendly fibers, or leather from animals he has killed himself.
20. How did your character come to be known by his street name?
Elyas has had many street names throughout his career in the shadows, but his most recent one is Old Wolf, in reference to both his old age (in comparison to the average runner) and his companion wolf. Those that respect him usually just refer to him as Wolf, but there are some who refer to him instead as Old Man.