Sarah Lancester was born to a low-income, hard working family. She was the second child, always getting nagged at for not being more like her sister, who was a straight-A straight shooter (now a successful lawyer) was the meter for Ivy's failure. Her dislike for this fact was evident from a young age, and won her nickname 'Ivy' referencing her wonderfully annoying personality and habits (at least according to her family). At the age of 10, her magical potential was tested and found out, for the chagrin of her parents. They spent all their money on her sister's education, so when Ivy came of age, she left for the Navy to get her education, and a free ticket away from her family. While she was quite competent, she didn't have enough clout to advance in the ranks, so after being passed over for the third time, she left the Navy with skills and severance she got from them. For a while she did jobs on the East Coast, finding the freedom fun, but it grew stale fast. She was raised in a family that valued order above everything else, and she genuinely enjoyed Navy life, and the freelance business was not the same. So when she was asked to the latest job, she was happy to find out she would be serving on a ship again.

We are shaped by our heritage. Facial features, skin tone, height,
build, metatype, even aptitudes are influenced by the genes
passed from parent to child. Attitude, too, is taught by parents,
informed by their own lives and their cultural heritage. Where
does your character come from, what is her lineage, who were
her parents, and what did she inherit from them?

Answered in 2.

1. Ivy’s got black hair, usually cut short, though it is longer than it used to be since she’s not enlisted anymore, and she’s gotten a little bit lazy and hence out of shape. She’s more on the short side, but she wouldn’t be mistaken for a dwarf.
Parents can be proud of their children or regret ever bringing
them into the world. Some are loving, and some are indifferent.
All of them are only metahuman and have their own opinions
of their children. Assuming they could speak, what would each
of your character’s parents say about her
2. Ivy comes from a strict family, so her parents would probably think that’s a lazy bum while running the shadows, since it’s not a proper job. They were proud of her in the Navy, but when she got out of service, they were pretty cold towards her, and they barely ever call anymore, instead pining upon her elder sister, who’s a lawyer.
3.
Many people remember certain historical events for the rest of
their lives. For those alive in the first decade of the 21st century,
it could be the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or the
Tiananmen Square protests, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, or
the attacks of 11 September 2001. People remember where they
were, and what they were doing when they first heard of these
events. Shadowrun history has significant events as well, such as
the assassination of President Dunkelzahn, the Crash 2.0, and
the emergence of technomancers and artificial intelligences.
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?
4. Lyoness emerging from the Themes was a big day for Ivy, she was ordered to the site during the time, though she never actually set foot on the island. She assessed it though, and what she saw she told only to the higher-ups, and has never talked about what she witnessed there. Her behavior there may also be one of the reasons she was not promoted.
5.
Very few people choose to become shadowrunners. More
likely, they are thrown into the life by a chaotic and uncaring
world. Even if she made a conscious decision to enter the
shadows, her decision is influenced by the world around her.
How did your character get into shadowrunning, and why did
she take that path?

4. She can't go any higher because while she's a patriot, she's not politically connected enough, so she's advised to retire. And she can’t find any freelance work that’s not connected to corps, and she tries to stay away from the revolutionaries that are in Britain, she a strict policy of not doing anything with politics.

People have control over their own living arrangements. From
the child young enough to use crayons and tape all the way up
to the elderly shut-in who plasters her walls with family photos
and cat pictures, everyone makes their living spaces more personally
pleasing. What is your character’s living space like, and
what has he added or changed to make it his own?
5. No matter how much she tries to deny it, Ivy is part of her family, and owes much to them for bringing her up the way they did. Order is important for her, and she always keeps a photo of her family on her desk wherever she is. Her books are in neat alphabetical order, as well as her favorite trid series on her comm. Link (Firefly Remastered, current Doctor Who, and the Simpsons). She keeps her technical and military books separate from purely pleasure ones. Otherwise her room is quite puritan.

Everyone has beliefs, and many have beliefs strong enough to
be convictions. Some are religious, some are political, some are
social, and some are just about why people are here. What does
your character believe in, what are her convictions (if any), and
why does she hold them?

6. Ivy’s main belief is in order. She grew up in a family where everything had its place, cleanliness was necessary, and everyone worked hard. Her parents were poor and not of a good education, so they encouraged their 2 daughters to work nonstop and become better then them, which they did. So in her perfect world, everything and everyone has their place. This was put to the test in the few years she was running the shadows, but for some strange reason, it was left intact.

Everyone has aspects of their personality that grate on someone.
Even the best of friends annoy one another from time to time.
The flaws in a person’s character are as important as the qualities.
What do you dislike most about your character’s personality?
7. She’s not much for leisure. Well, she can party like hell if she’s on shore leave, but that’s shore leave. If someone’s napping during the job, she’ll chew them out, whether it’s the captain, or the gunner that saved her life yesterday. She can be quite the neat freak as well, so don’t be surprised if she starts cleaning the ship up in the middle of the night cause she can’t sleep.

The Sixth World is considered by many to be spinning out of
control. If anyone could exert control over it, it would be the
“Big Ten” triple-A megacorps. These transnationals exert a lot of
influence on everyday life in the 2070s. Which of the Big Ten
does your character hold in the highest (or least low) regard,
which does he like the least, and why?
8. Ivy doesn’t hold the corps in high regard, in fact, she is positively mistrusting of them. Having the innate distrust of a low ranking industrial worker (her father) influence her throughout her childhood. And also, being British, distrusting bit government and corporate entities is kind of a national hobby.

People make acquaintances and friends; we’re hardwired for it.
Humans are social animals. This is especially true in the shadows,
where often it is not the power you have, but the power you
can borrow, and not who you, are but who you know. There’s a
story behind each and every one of these relationships. What is
the story with your character and her contacts?
9. Fixer: John Adam: an ex-RN officer, who was discharged for smuggling, he helped Ivy get some jobs in the shadows, and he invited her over to the UCAS East Coast. Ivy served under him for a while in the Navy.

Talislegger: Since moving to the East Coast, Ivy spent a long time looking for a trustworthy Talislegger, and found Jim. Him and Ivy bonded over the 2071 Football World Cup, and have a maintained a professional relationship ever since, mied with drinking binges.

It’s Sunday morning, and your character has no commitments
until tomorrow afternoon. What does she do for the day?
10. She panics. Okay, not. She sleeps in, which means 7 am (instead of the usually 6 am with going to bed at 11 pm at the preceding night), eats breakfast, and cleans up her room. If she really has nothing to do, then she’ll either start rewatching her favorite trid shows (listed above), or go shopping and have a fun day in a mall or somewhere, just spending money on fun stuff.

Your character has a specific skill set, a list of Active and
Knowledge skills that define what she knows and her areas of
expertise. How did she come to learn those skills, and how did
she develop them to those levels?
11. Her magical skills are from the Royal Navy training program, plain and simple. She’s not much suited for combat magic, or rather doesn’t really like the thought of flinging around magical damage and waiting for the drain to come when she’s in mortal danger, so in combat she prefers using guns. You may also note that she has no Drive Groundcraft skill, which in her case means she has no license, and no knowledge of how to actually drive. While not a big hindrance in this day and age, it is somewhat are still. Etiquette and Negotiation she picked up while running the shadows, while the rest of her skills came from the Navy.

Everyone has their limits. People can be dark, but most people’s
instinct is to draw the line at certain actions and thoughts, and
they keep to their own moral convictions. Is there a moral limit
that your character enforces on the jobs she takes, and in what
shadow work would she refuse to engage?
12. Ivy lives by some basic rules that were drilled into her in the navy: Kill only when in war or specifically tasked, Geneva rules of POWs apply. She’s not big on torture, and only believes in using it I really pressed for time or methods, and not doing it herself.


If you have an Awakened or technomancer character, consider
your character’s tradition and streams. Even within the major
established magical traditions and the recently emerged technomantic
streams, there is room for personalization. Ask yourself
what drew her to that particular paradigm, how does it effect
the way she views the world and her magic, how does it translate
into choice of mentor spirit or paragon, and how does it affect
the appearance of the spirits or sprites you conjure or compile?
13. For Ivy, magic is just another tool to use, a very dangerous and versatile tool, but a tool nonetheless. She’s a straight up hermetic mage, and while the British druids are more hermetic than their brethren, Ivy is even more extreme for them, this was one of the reasons she was not promoted. She hasn’t been through an initiation yet, so what she learns there might prove to be an interesting experience. She doesn’t view herself as a scholar, but a simple operative, so she is not as interested in the workings and theory of magic, but much more of a practical approach.

While acceptance and bias vary from place to place, augmentations—
be they bio-, cyber-, gene-, or nanoware—are increasingly
common and available in the Sixth World. However, personal
technological enhancement is rarely cheap, and many implants
that runners possess are restricted. How did your character
come to have the enhancements she has, how were they paidfor, and what motivated the choices she made (if she did make
the choices)?
14. She doesn’t really have an opinion on ‘ware. It’s a tool, like magic is, though one doesn’t work well with the other. She never got any ‘ware, for two reasons: it would interfere with her magic, thus reducing her effectiveness and two: she was afraid of her parent’s opinion. They are against altering one’s body, they find it unnatural. While Ivy herself has no misgivings about bio and cybertech in general, when she sees someone so augmented that they barely resemble their original selves, her parents’ warning ring in her ear.

Life as a shadowrunner is by definition outside the bounds of
“normal” life. Shadowrunners do not truly fit into the lives of
ordinary people, whether they live in slums or mansions. What
does your character think of ordinary life, mainstream culture,
and those who abide by it?
15. What is normal that is a question? If we look at Navy life as normal, then Ivy longs for it. The order and control found in it coupled with the adventures one has on the sea was a perfect fit for an adventurous neat freak like Ivy. A regular life, on the other hand, like her elder sister’s, who’s a lawyer, thoroughly terrifies her. She would find no meaning in that life.

Everyone has nightmares. Sometimes, we forget the dream
completely on waking. Sometimes, the nightmare haunts us or
even recurs. If your character had a lingering nightmare or a
deep-rooted fear, what would it be, and why does he find it so
terrifying?
16. Though she wound deny it, if anyone would bring it up, Ivy, like all or at least most magicians, is terrified of losing her magic. Although it is very, very hard to lose it, Ivy still fears such a happening, since she sees magic as her only way of continuing her preferred lifestyle. Losing that life style is also another fear of hers, and the last years spent shadowrunnng were quite harrowing for her spiritually and mentally, since she felt – literally- like a fish out of water.

People tend to attach sentimental value to items in their possession
or people they are close to. They make an effort to
keep these close by and safe. What is your character’s “sacred
object” or “close one,” and how did they come to be so important
to him?
17. She doesn’t have much in the way of favorite objects. Her focus is an amulet that she was given as part of her Navy attire and basic gear, and it still represents her clinging to her old ways. It’s very much like a dog-tag, with her name written on it.

One of metahumanity’s greatest assets is its ability to look toward
the future and imagine a better life. Even small children
have dreams about what they want to be when they grow up.
What did your character want to become when he was a child,
and what are his goals now?
18. Like every little poor girl, Ivy wanted to be the Queen of England. And then a ballerina. And then a singer, a model, and every nice profession she had no skills or talents for. And then her magic ability Awakened. She was thrilled; she wanted to be the good witch in the stories. But she soon learned that most magical jobs were occupied by those who were either corp-backed, or politically inclined towards the Druids. She was neither, so she left for the RN, as an aftermath of a drunken night.

Everyone has a name, but a runner’s street name is a representation
of his connection to the shadows. Sometimes runners
choose their own moniker, but more often it is given to them as
a nickname or earned through some (mis)adventure. How did
your character come to be known by his street name?
19. Ivy is her nickname from birth, even though her actual name is Sarah. Her family called her Ivy, her friends called her Ivy; her colleagues did not call her Ivy. She had troubles abandoning her past when she came over the Atlantic, so she chose to use her old nickname, as a reminder of where she came from.

A person’s appearance can say volumes about him. From fashion
sense, to the colors he prefers, to the way he walks and speaks.
Sometimes, his personality determines his appearance, and,
sometimes, the appearance he chooses to present the world effects
his personality. What does your character look like, and
what inspired his choices?

Answered in 1.

Basic info:
Human
Magician
Initiative: 5
S: 10
P: 9
Total spent BP: 419

Attributes


Qualities : Magician

Skills:


Magic


Gear


Lifestyle: as provided by the ship
starting cash: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2603022/ = 2900 (I had nearly the same left over from char creation)