EDIT: At the request of one of my players I have chosen to redact certain parts of these character profiles so there are no spoilers. The text will be blacked like so: banana. If you want to read it, highlight it.
Nancy - Eve the Military Specialist
Eve is a renegade Coalition Military Specialist (half intelligence officer, half commando) on the run from the people that once trained her. Nancy liked the idea of having a character that could fight, but who was also a strategist. She also like the idea of playing a "jaded" character who once believed in the Coalition and its propaganda, until she saw its methods in action. Nancy has possibly the most well developed back story of the group so far, as most of my players are still developing their characters. She's also my wife, so she naturally had more time to discuss details with me.
Eve grew up in a fortified farming community called Jackson in what was once the state of Tennessee. She lost her family as a teenager during a D-Bee attack, and joined the local militia in order to keep it from happening to other families. While serving as a member of the Jackson militia she was scouted by a covert Coalition agent who had infiltrated the militia in order to give the Coalition intelligence on the community (it wants to turn Jackson into a Coalition settlement). After convincing Eve that the Coalition was the only path to true security for Jackson, Eve was sent to a training facility with the hope that she could return to Jackson and help to convert the town using her familiarity with its people and politics.
At first, it worked. She collected intelligence on nonhumans and magic users, helped to spread Coalition propaganda, and coordinated a small intelligence network at the Coalition's behest. Once the Coalition started actually assassinating D-Bees, magic users, and persons apprehensive of their control Eve's opinion changed. She was given an order to assassinate a high ranking community member who was nonhuman, an order she refused. The Coalition moved ahead despite her objection and planted a bomb in his compound which killed close to a dozen people. Eve saw the Coalition for what it was, and decided that her only option was to get as far away as possible. She stole schematics for two advanced robots from a Coalition database, and made contact with black market agents. The deal she cut was simple: Transport out of the Coalition's reach, and 100k credits for the schematics. They never even hesitated.
As the campaign started she had fled from Jackson in the dead of night carrying only the rudimentary equipment she had in her personal possession, and the schematics which would buy her passage. She could have chosen to steal power armor or more from a nearby Coalition outpost, but chose not to since it would only put them on her trail that much faster. She has travelled from Jackson to the independent community of Kingsdale in Missouri. There she met two agents of her black market contact who will escort her into the Colorado Baronies and away from the vengeful Coalition.
Eric - Carlin the Technowizard
Eric had started out wanting to play a more active combat class than he wound up with. While reviewing the classes in the main book I guess the TK Wizard spoke to him.
Carlin is a native of the Colorado Baronies and the New West. He came from an affluent and aristocratic family who made its wealth in the ranching trade. This wealth allowed them to provide a high quality education for their son in a region where literacy is relatively scarce, and he excelled in engineering and the sciences. It also allowed them to buy passage to arcane metropolis of Lazlo for him when his gift for the arcane manifested in adolescence. While at Lazlo he apprenticed under renowned wizards and mages, and excelled in his education. His talent in the arcane and his passion for engineering made him perfectly suited for the craft of technowizardy, and he quickly became one of the most promising TK wizards in Lazlo.
Carlin tired of life in the city, though. The challenge and thrill of his apprenticeship faded, and the mystical wonder of Lazlo had dimmed. His disillusionment deepened as he saw some of the most powerful mages and supernatural beings in all of America gathered in one place, wasting time discussing trivial matters of diplomacy and boasting of their enlightenment while magic users and innocent D-Bees were being hunted by the Coalition outside the safety of their walls. Carlin had decided to do more. He left his apprenticeship in the dead of night to put his skills to the test in the world outside of Lazlo's shining walls, where they could serve a true purpose.
Carlin had heard of a group of magic users and guerillas who risked death, and worse, to locate and safeguard those hunted by the Coalition and smuggle them to friendly settlements. They were called the White Circle. Carlin made contact with a Circle agent in the city of Kingsdale, and started operating as a field agent raiding Coalition prisons and sheparding the hunted through backroads and safehouses. At the start of the campaign Carlin has been assigned to escort a cyberknight guarding a mysterious package from Kingsdale to the Baronies since his familiarity with the region made him the ideal guide. Whatever the cyberknight has, it can never fall into the hands of the Coalition...
Wes - Ivan the Combat Cyborg
Wes had quite a few ideas for characters, but being the last person the make his character (the day of the first session no less) I was afraid he'd feel pigeonholed by the need for a strong combat character to balance out the robust magic/psionic base the party had developed. Luckily, a combat cyborg was on the list of characters he was considering anyhow.
Ivan was a peasant laborer in the Ural mountains of post-Apocalypse Russia. War, suffering, and privation had marked his entire life. The warlords who controlled the region brought a measure of peace and stability, even if their rule was harsh. However, this peace came at a price: conscription. When new conflicts arose it was not uncommon for these warlords to scour the lower class of their settlements for capable hands to serve on the front lines. In Ivan's case, conscription carried a higher cost. As he was processed by the press gang which drug him from his hovel a psionicist noticed his unusual will and mental resilience. These made him a perfect candidate to withstand the stress of cybernetic conversion. He was given the choice to accept full conversion and serve the local warlord for twenty years, or die. It has been years since Ivan looked in a mirror and saw his own face looking back.
After conversion Ivan was informed that after his term of service he would be decommissioned and allowed to live out his life comfortably, even if he would never be human again. He was also told that failure to fight with distinction, follow orders without question, or desertion would be rewarded with activation of the explosive which had been placed next to his brain inside the armor which was now his flesh. While initially conflicted by the circumstances which had been thrust upon him, Ivan made a choice to embrace his lot in life as a cybernetic enforcer for a ruthless tyrant. To do otherwise, or lament his condition, would have surely driven him mad. After years of relentless war and brutality Ivan had become as cold as the Siberian wastes on which he shed blood.
It was during this service that Ivan was drug through a Rift to North America. A particularly powerful wizard had laid a trap for the advanced forces of Ivan's warlord upon a ley line. The magic unleashed during the ensuing battle tore a Rift open around Ivan and his compatriots, hurtling him from the snow driven tundra to a vast rocky desert. A caravan of black market arms smugglers working the backroads between the Coalition state of Missouri and the Colorado Baronies found Ivan, heavily damaged and barely mobile. After noting his unusual combat cyborg frame, and the size of the gun he pointed in their face, they offered him repairs and a job if he'd work as muscle for their enterprise. To date it has been the easiest job he has ever done. Most recently he and a fellow arms smuggler were given hasty instructions to meet a person of interest in Kingsdale and escort them West, beyond the reach of the Coalition.
Ronnie - Izzy the Ley Line Walker (DECEASED AS OF SESSION 3)
Ben - Vincent the Cyberknight
Ben, like Eric and Wes, is a veteran of my games. He has played a variety of characters before, but his choice of cyberknight wasn't a surprise. In my experience he has an affinity for paragon archetypes, and they tend to give him a good avenue to RP. Like Ronnie there is not a lot in terms of character history yet, something I hope to change at some point.
Vincent is a cyberknight who has only recently finished his apprenticeship. His first assignment, along with four veteran knights, was to patrol the remote wilderness southeast of the city state of Kingsdale. While serving in this capacity Vincent and his compatriots encountered a rift which had recently opened, and found a group of humanoid D-Bees desperately fleeing a demonic creature which had forced itself through the rift. In the ensuing battle all of Vincent's companion knights perished, and only one of the D-Bees had survived. The beast was dead, but Vincent was soon to follow with mortal wounds. And then the surviving D-Bee touched him. He was filled with white light and warmth, and was amazed to find only scars remained in the place of horrific wounds. Vincent buried the deceased with honor, and escorted the mysterious humanoid back to Kingsdale.
Upon reporting this incident to his superiors in the Order, he was immediately instructed to make contact with the head of a sympathetic group called the White Circle. They informed him that the humanoid he had found was an Amana, a race of supernatural creatures who could cure diseases, heal wounds, and even resurrect the dead. They were worth millions in the slave trade, and the Coalition hunted them mercilessly. Together the Order and the White Circle devised a plan to smuggle the Amana out of Kingsdale to the Colorado Baronies where the Order could properly safeguard it. They sealed the Amana in a magical sarcophagus in a deep sleep, one that would render it invisible to psionic, magical, and technological detection. Along with two agents of the Circle, Vincent must now take the Amana into the New West to safety.
Darby - Max the Burster
Max was a street rat born on the lower levels of Chi Town. His family had reservations about the methods of the Coalition, but the security and comfort afforded by the military juggernaut outweighed their apprehension. From an early age Max had a knack for computers, and was constantly fiddling with the assorted devices and programs that he had access to. By adolescence he had become a skilled, if amateur, hacker and had aspirations of parlaying his skill into a profitable career, either in the Coalition government or one of the many companies which provided services to it. This all changed the day he burst into flames, and his latent psychic nature became evident.
The Coalition tolerates psychics, but strictly regulates and monitors them. After processing and registry, Max was evaluated by a team of Coalition scientists and psi-stalkers who determined that, despite his innocence, the pyrokinetic nature of his power was a threat to the peace and stability that Coalition citizens expected. They informed Max that he would be "tagged" with a tracking device, and would be required to undergo surgeries and drug therapy to inhibit his natural abilities. Having, to this point, been a Coalition citizen is good standing Max was held in a minimum security facility to await his fate. Max, however, had no intention of undergoing such procedures, he had seen those subjected to them before wandering the streets of Chi-Town half dead. He burned a hole through his cell, quite literally, and used an old map he had hacked off of a Coalition maintenance computer to make his way down into the bowels of Chi-Town. There, he eluded Psi-Stalkers and Dog Packs, though narrowly, until he could make contact with hacker associates who worked for the black market.
Max's skill, both as a hacker and as a burster, made him a useful asset to the black market. They offered to assist his escape from Chi-Town, and in exchange he would "work for the company" for a few years to pay off his debt (evading the Coalition was, after all, an expensive affair). Max's life since his escape from Chi-Town has been a whirlwind of shady dealings and narrow escapes. After helping to safeguard an arms shipment into the city state of Kingsdale, Max and his associate Ivan have been tasked with meeting and escorting a person of interest to the black market up to Tolkeen and then West into the Colorado Baronies.