Jack Mortis*, a character for Shadowrun®

Table of Contents

• Building Mortis
• Initial concept
• The rationales
• Background
• Initial Stats
• Description
• Growing as a character . . . (how he has "matured")
• Current incarnation . . . (what he looks like now)
• Mortis speaks
• Volume I
• Mortis's Streets (a list of people and places encountered)

Initial Concept

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The Rationales

Because I went with a human, I did not have an abundance of Body to play around with, so Wired Reflexes were the natural choice for speed.  Smartlink II was never in doubt, as were cybereyes.  So, there went 3.7 Essence.  I chose Thermographic vision, Optical Magnification 3 (deadly at all ranges), and Flare Compensation for the eyes, not wanting to go past the "free" 0.5 Essence one can cram into cybereyes.

For versatility, I wanted him to be able to chip skills, access any computer, and have maps pop up in his eye, so I went with a  Skillwire Plus 6, Softlink 4, Data Jack, and Display Link.  That was another 1.5 Essence down the tubes.  I wanted to beef up his body some, but I wanted to avoid the obvious modification of Dermal Plating which might compromise his ability to infiltrate certain places, especially corporate stuff.  I went with Bone Lacing, but I did not want his skeleton lighting up on metal detectors, and I had little Essence to play with, so I went with plastic lacing, another 0.5 Essence.  The last 0.3 Essence was spent on Hearing Amplification and Audio Damper.  I wanted more senses, but I was out of Essence.

I wanted him to be strong and fast, so I went with Muscle Augmentation 4.  I wanted him to be able to take hits reasonably well, sometimes a problem for human sammies, so I gave him Trauma Damper and Platelet Factories.  Finally, who could refuse Enhanced Articulation's bonus to Reaction and all Active skills (even if that gets trimmed down to a pretty short list in this campaign)?

His attributes were limited by points mostly.  I took a 4 in Strength and Quickness to accomodate Muscle Augmentation 4.  I took a 3 in all mental attributes because this concept really needed all of them, unlike most sammies who tend to blow off Charisma, beef up Willpower to resist many of the nasty spells and allow them to fight Spirits (it also affects the number of Combat Pool dice), and beef up Intelligence to be able to notice things (factoring into Combat Pool dice and Reaction does not hurt their motivation).  Finally, I took a 5 Body rather than a 6 because the Bioware I was starting the game with could "fit" into a 5 Body and I felt I needed the points to pay for the soon-to-be very expensive skills.

I wanted him to be versatile and reasonably tough, so I decided to take Unarmed Combat and leave Armed Combat for later or use a Skillsoft.  The reason simply being that he would definitely need UA Combat sometime and it's the one weapon you can consistently take anywhere.  I decided he was more of an urban operative, so I opted to concentrate his Stealth in Urban environments.  I decided that he would be good at hitting the streets and getting information out of people, so I gave him Negotiation to play nice and Interrogation when nice did not work.  I specialized the latter in Verbal, as I saw him as doing most of his interrogation on the fly.  I wanted to give him more Street Etiquette, but I countered his low skill with a large number of contacts, reflecting that he may not know the streets quite as well, but he knows a lot of people that do.

The general premise of him having been a Shadowrunner working for various companies developed into him working regularly with a large company recently.  Said company had him coordinate an international team of Shadowrunners (pretty ideal to be able to chip four languages in such cases).  Funding decreased and his team was let go.  The bulk (all?) of them went home, leaving Jack to once again get himself into a team.
 

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The Background

A drifter had been arrested for drunk and disorderly.  He was locked up to sleep it off, as usual.  Unfortunately, the drifter turned out to be a psychopathic shapeshifter - I think that's redundant, personally.  Anyway, he killed my parents and a few others before one of our fellow citizens and, Stan, a retired Lonestar Fast Response Team combat Mage, caught up to him.  I did not have the satisfaction of seeing it, but I hear the bastard's brains squirted out his ears when Stan let loose on him.

My godfather, Nikki "The Hammer" Scarpetti, lived in Seattle.  He flew in and helped arrange the funeral and stayed with me until the day of the service.  I was pretty unemotional about the whole thing, having been distanced from the violence and still not yet fully comprehending the magnitude of what had happened.   Nikki took me back to Seattle to stay with him, and things were very different there.  Now I was living in the heart of major city.  I had to wise up fast.  Nikki helped me out.  Luckily for me, he had connections locally and I was rarely in any real danger, so I had a chance to live and learn in relative safety.

However, until my parents' death, I thought that an honest, hard-working guy that hit the gym regularly was pretty assured of making it through life.  It did not work for my parents, and I planned to learn from my history.  I had no intention of being meat for the grinder when I crossed paths with a shapeshifter.  I didn't have Magic, so I needed to get an edge.  I started spending most of my time at a local martial arts dojo and the gym, trying to get what edge I could as a 'mundane'.

One day, on my way back home from school, escorted by Nikki's friend, Tony "Tiger" Marconi, I saw violence up close an personal for the first time.  A trio of thugs wanted to impress or intimidate someone and messing with The Hammer's godson seemed like a good option.  That was a big mistake.  The three of them confronted "Uncle Tony" and me on the sidewalk.  I had no idea what was going on, but Tony knew exactly what was going down.  The trio reached for their guns.  Tony was a blur.  Before I could say "oh shit" he had all three of them down and at least one of them was not breathing anymore.  Just as quickly, Tony resumed walking, with me in tow, dumbfounded.  He acted as if the run in with the thugs was no more significant than brushing lint off his jacket.  After a few paces, he stopped, looked me right in the eye and said "Remember Johnny, your body is the one weapon you always got.  You know how to use it, and it can save your ass."

After that I decided that I wanted to get cybered.  I didn't have Magic, and I needed an *real* edge or I would not be long for this Awakened world.  After a few years, it was clear to me that Nikki was involved with the Mafia in Seattle.  From my naive perspective it seemed like a pretty good gig.  Almost like some violent boys' club.  Nikki made a pointed effort to explain to me the dark underbelly of the Mafia's world and dissuaded me from getting involved in it.  He had never steered me wrong, so I did as he said and resisted the lure of easy money and the pretense of quick power.

The desire to be a Samurai never died.  During a job fair at my high school, I stopped by the Saedder-Krupp booth and let their con artist go to work on me.  By the time I was through, I was set up for an interview with their security division, convinced that I would be the most dangerous man on the planet in a few short weeks.  I ended up working for them for a few years after I graduated high school.  It probably would have been a shorter stint, but I bought a lot of 'ware through their "company store."  So, I was working off debt most of the time.  People may disagree as to the advantages and disadvantages of 'ware, but they all unanimously agree that it is pretty damn expensive.  It was a slightly rough ride, politically.  I felt out of my element, dealing with corporate types and, like most young punks, I refused to "give in" and learn the corporate game.

Fortunately, I soon had a good career change that would allow me to feed on the corporate tit while still maintaining some distance from the water coolers and power ties.  I was recruited into a shadowrunning team.  We did jobs for corporations, and often I was working for Saederr-Krupp itself, but the work was much more interesting, paid better, and there was no paperwork.  I managed to get some bioware with the nuyen I started pulling in, but I also needed it a lot more than before.  Getting shot at had become a much more frequent occurence.

Nikki was not a young man when I met him.  By now I had figured out that he was a retired Mafia lieutenant of some sort.  He had grown tired of the business and decided that gardening would be much more enjoyable than spending his later years waiting to be violently usurped.  He had earned a good deal of respect in his time though, so it was not a big surprise when he was approached with a proposition to help broker a deal for better coexistence of the Mafia and Yakuza.

To make a long story short, things went astray and radical members of both organizations struck.  Nikki died and Uncle Tony dropped out of sight.  I don't think Tony bought it, though, because a package full of mementos and heirlooms mysteriously appeared in my apartment a few days later.  I suppose I was the closest thing Nikki ever had to a son.  The whole thing has left me a little leery of both the Mafia and the Yakuza, but there is really no one to blame.  It's the life, and death, they choose.  It's ironic that they don't see eye-to-eye, but maybe it's best for the rest of us that crime does not get too organized.

What do I think about them?  Well, they are what they are and I am not part of it.  I would like it to stay that way.  Just like anything else, some Mafia are good joes like my friend Buck, but some are scum of the Earth.  Same goes for the Yaks, but I have less ties to them just by sheer circumstance.  If we're really lucky the Mafia scum and the Yak scum will wipe each other out.  Yeah, right - I'll keep wishing.

Anyway, I continued to do Shadowruns, occasionally for different companies, but usually just for Saedder-Krupp.  Most of them were pretty straightforward, a stolen prototype here, a foiled biological weapon there, and so on.  I ran across a couple of shapeshifters in the course of my work.  Most of them were on the other team and I killed them happily, but one of them I actually worked with unknowingly.  It was tolerable, but I would not *ask* to work with it.  As a matter of fact, I switched teams when I found out what it was.

I try to be professional, but who's to say what that really means here among the shadows?  A truly professional Shadowrunner is a mythical beast at best.  I try to get the job done, keep my team alive, and piss off as few heavy hitters as possible.  It may not be much of a creed, but at least I have one.

Hey chummer, I think you have had more than enough to drink.  What do you say we get you home so you can sleep it off?"

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Description

He has dark auburn hair, more brown than red.  His cybereyes appear normal (unless you look close and spot his optical magnification system).  He has brown irises with flecks of red/brown and bronze in them.  His hairstyle is short (2"-3" on top), tapered, and neatly combed back, slightly spiked on top.

When he is trying to look street tough, he usually goes for casual clothes, form-fitting body armor 3, forearm guards, and a black secure long coat.  He prefers not to wear hats, so as not to restrict his field of vision.  For corporate endeavors/meetings, he will opt for form-fitting body armor 3, forearm guards, and a good suit.

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Initial Stats

Contacts: Fixer (Sarek), Street Doc (Gangrene), Street Mage (Cauldron), Armorer (Jamie "Two Guns"), Decker (Kamikaze), Mafia Lieutenant (Buck "The Shank" O'Malley), Corporate Security Lieutenant (George Rogers), Mr. Johnson (Mr. Forester).

Growing as a Character . . . (how he has "matured")

• 2 karma for background -
• Run 1 -

Current Incarnation . . . (what he looks like now)

Edges/Flaws: Enemies: Fuchi, Humanis Policlub; Day Job: Personal trainer and firearms instructor at ???? Country Club; Dislikes/Distrusts shapeshifters.