Faction: Freelancer (which incidentally, was a game I had fun playing)
Name: Joe Darkthorne
Occupation: Mechanic first, incidental hired problem solver second.
Species: Human
Nationality: Neo System
Gender: M
Age: 22ish . Is it young for awesome commando? Mittens and T’shock don’t seem to think so.
Language: Default, Deksharr
Money: ???
Desc: You’ve seen one sci-fi jumpsuit wearing human, you’ve seen em all, right? Wrong! Joe has pockets! Well, that and other details.
Joe is a Human of the sorta tall, mildly-tanned-despite-all-that-deep-space-travel variety. Short brown hair lessens the hassle involved with combing it, and he has a grayish blue eye. No, Joe isn’t cycloptic in the mythological sense. His left eye is covered with a flat, round matte black plate with a thin bar of similar material trailing along the path a sunglasses leg (arm, temple, whatever) would stopping before his ear.
As for the outfit choice, as mentioned Joe is sporting a dull white full body suit gig (with pockets, take THAT Starfleet) complete with gloves and boots. A gray jacket is worn in the obvious area as well.
Size: 6’0
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Eye Color: Grey Blue
Background: Joe can use the exasperated phrase of ‘I know I’m adopted’ legitimately, due to the fact he is.
We’ll skip over the whiney details.
His mother Eliza Darkthorne is transport pilot for the Strife Alliance. His father David Darkthorne is a ship mechanic of the civilian variety that also knows his way around less than civilian gear, take a wild guess who the ‘I know I’m adopted’ comments are in regards to at times.
The obvious resulting tendency towards spacecraft lead to a lot of Joe’s teachings being the restoration of an older Deksharr transport craft, named after some of his mother’s joking comments on how well he’d fly the thing if he took tips from his dad.
As for the whole ‘bounty hunter’ thing, Joe got the license for such because considering how often insanity turns up in his life anyways, he may as well be able to get something out of his hassle. That, and for some reason some law enforcement types seem more accepting of violent self defense if you’re a bounty hunter as opposed to someone just trying not to die.
For now, Joe spends his time playing the part of a wandering mechanics shop as a preference, and dealing with the issues a bounty license as a facepalm worthy third option when other misc stuff doesn’t turn out.
Personality: Darkthorne. That about says it all and so far its people who know what that means small P-base wise. But I should fill this in later on.
Abilities:
Private Mind: The obvious given of resolve entering questionably sane area for a Darkthorne handles a majority of resistance. Those issues where will alone is mocked and ignored are, In turn, mocked and ignored by Joe. The first time that came up hit a bit of a snag, and he has a permanent reminder of that encounter. But since then...
I Could Totally Fix That, And Make It Awesome: Joe has a knack for fixing things, regardless of technicalities such as ‘the engine melted’ or ‘the civilization that built those is dead’ and ‘the instructions are in French’.
Joe also has the convenient perk of improving on and customizing things. There are two major tendencies that goes towards.
The first, is materials and their durability. Simple enough, they tend to be a step up. Light armor = medium armor, continue line of thought.
The second is energy efficiency. This is a bit less simplistic, but Joe tends to default towards rigging things to switch between ‘half the energy requirement needed’ conservation mode and ‘same energy, twice the result’.
It also leads to a tendency towards protecting equipment vs disabling and draining means.
What Good Is Knowing How To Make Weapons and Ships If You Can’t Use Them?: An overly long title for an ability already listed by cuppycake faced peoples, with an ‘and ships’ crammed in there. However Joe is a violent mechanic, not a commando with mechanic tendencies, or full on commando like mentioned cuppycake faced people.
Weaknesses:
Twisted Self Worth: Joe’s sense of self worth could likely be considered unfounded, considering his belief that normal beings and means can deal with even the most Dues Ex fueled person or problem.
However, while he accepts the value of his actions and attempts at the time, after the fact he doesn’t consider it anything worthwhile. If people consider him of any value at all in anything, he questions their standards, even if it’s just basic things like ‘wow! You’re not a complete jerk!’.
Simpler version. Tell him he’s worthless and he’ll probably ignore this even if you provide factual evidence and reality stat sheet of whatever special perks race, diety, or whatever you’re talking about. Compliment him or his accomplishments and he’ll wonder what’s wrong with you.
So, Does That Technically Count As Mind Control?: Being immune to mental futzery itself, does not help sometimes if your reaction could fall under ‘losing your mind’ anyways at times.
And it does not look very good if someone brings in a psychic to try and ‘nonviolently’ find out some info from you, and your reaction is to try and mash them with a chair if you find out what they tried to do, even though they can’t get results.
Is This A Good Thing Or A Bad Thing?
What Reputation?: Despite the things he’s dealt with and done in his life, the universe in general hasn’t seemed to have really noticed these or his capabilities. Obviously on the personal ‘we saw him do that’ level people know this, but word doesn’t seem to get around.
While good for not attracting any more attention than cliché theory already throws at PC’s, it’s not so good for trying to convince people that yes, of course you’re qualified for whatever.
But we can’t all be nigh ageless geniuses, known universal saviors, gambling overlords in training, Underground in name and style commando, etc, to drive how ‘impressive’ we are across.
Weapons:
Laser Handgun: Surprise, it’s a laser gun. Most everybody could get one, or has one. Energy efficiency customized, and with integral unseen to naked eye ultraviolent laser sight. There’s a point to that.
Field Blade: Simplified forcefield tech for fun and violence. Deals with that pesky need for a non physical blade if you don’t want to carry 18 knives to every lightsaber fight. It avoids the whole excessive burn damage energy formed weapons tend to cause, while gaining the nifty gig of being as sharp as the laws of physics are capable of going.
Energy efficiency customized. While it can do blunt just fine, a weightless blunt object does not make the most efficient weapon.
Knife: Sharp object, duh. Constructed from custom armor materials with insulated grip to deal with those ‘lol I’ll just use electricity/heat/etc conduction on your silly physical weapon.’ Sorts.
Rod: …It’s a rod. Blunt object goodness made from a hunk of custom armor material, and treated for avoiding previously mentioned ‘lol conductivity’ issues.
Personal Equipment:
Grapple Gun: Ahem…
DUH.
Basic Blake Suit: Toootaly not a stealth suit. It’s a dull white, for starters. Looks like the usual fitting bodysuit + pockets gig. Funtime perks are ‘it matters what the environmental conditions are?’ protection. Full facemask that folds up into the neck area in the same style some jackets like to store hoods, sidestepping the quirk that is many space and hard radiation worthy suits forgetting anything for your head. The suit and mask offer the same protection as medium combat armor while sporting the plain sci-fi outfit look.
Jacket: It’s a gray jacket, it has jackety things like pockets, and hood that can be stored in a previously mentioned manner. Why is this noteworthy? Probably the fact it offers light armor protection while still being easily Laundromat cleaned.
What Are You Looking At?: A common outlook is, what good is a cybernetic bit if you don’t make it do more than standard issue people bits can? No eye lasers here. Joe’s left ‘eye’ has simpler by comparison things going for it. Zoom, combination IR/Nightvision without that pesky ‘aaaarg, someone turned the lights on!’ issue, etc. Audio/Visual recording capabilities are a noted extra though.
The oddest quirk is probably the ‘sleeptime recording’. When Joe goes to sleep, or involuntarily enters incapacitated land it automatically starts recording.
Duh EMP and other things won’t make part of his head explode or lead to direct current inside his skull. Not that high voltage upside someone’s head doesn’t hurt anyways though.
The Crash Landing
X-COM for the awesome. Totally ripping this off. The look and ‘also goes in water’ yeah. The complete lack of weapons and the fact in the games it’s just the unseen pilot, plus standing room for 14 soldiers / 3 remote vehicles the size of four soldiers, not so much.
http://www.xcomufo.com/usopaedia/pics/big/shot0000.png
The Crash Landing is an older Deksharr troop transport craft restored and modified, a process that started early in his life with help from a qualified ship mechanic and military pilot, also known as his parents.
You Have A What For An Engine?!: Of Joe’s various upgrades to his stuff, this is probably the most significant, and also the only one that’s rather obvious to others… Well, if they came into his ship and looked at what ran his ship anyways.
Joe could have just done the same energy efficiency treatment to the fuel cell taking engine that he’s done to many other things. He did somewhat, as fuel cells are ‘auxiliary’, so far as running a whole ship at full power is auxiliary.
Instead, he made scaled down big freaking starship reactor with Energy efficiency customization. As fun as it is to yell ‘We need more power!’ and ‘I’m givin it all it’s got!’ are, Joe enjoys being able to A) not need to ask the first, and B) being able to respond with ‘okay’ for the second. And besides, talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, so imagine what step yelling at yourself is.
Shields, weapons, engines, etc, haven’t been worked o individually yet.
Shields Are Down, And We’re Still Fine: Ever notice how a lot of the time even the most advance military spacecraft may as well be made of cardboard if the shields are down? If it was possible to exceed Barrakian’s expectations for hull standards, Joe would have done that.
Fire The Lasers! The same default weapons you’d find on many ships. Joe didn’t do anything to these. Many Barrakian’s would probably facepalm despite the horns over this.
Working From Home, In The Home Away From Home: Space originally meant for transporting troops and small war vehicles has been refitted. Joe now has comfortable living conditions usually associated with bigger ships, along with a workshop and extra storage.
IQ: Questionable at times.
Born: ???
Quote: “The downside to being able to repair the advanced goodies of lost civilizations, is that there isn’t anyone around to pay the bill anymore.”
This message was last edited by the player at 06:54, Fri 18 July 2008.