Character overview: Anderwol “Skid” Dersitaliantis
History:
Anderwol is the first of the Dersitaliantis clan to make it big as a shadowrunner, though not the last. His family members are known for their inability to hold on to money, and one could often find Skid crashed on a friend’s couch or in a Barrens squat, waiting for the next job to improve his situation for a few weeks.
That Skid started his career as a wage mage for a medium-size megacorp is fairly certain, though he doesn’t like to talk about it much and was almost certainly let go under unfortunate circumstances. Like many another mage on the streets, the drain of spellcasting began to catch up to him, and he turned to cyber-implants to try and hang on to his edge.
Skid’s fortunes turned when he hooked up with the TeeFive runner society, though, and when he finally left the shadows for good, he bought a run-down bar on the edge of the Redmond Barrens called the Zombie Zoo. It’s nowhere trendy to be seen, but it’s a good place to get drunk off quality exotic liquor while listening to really bad live music, and so shadow talent does show up there from time to time.
Personality:
Skid is vague, slothful, and sometimes crude. He’s not an easy man to like, but he never forgets those who help him out, and has sometimes put his life on the line for what he considers an honorable debt. He drinks and sleeps a lot, but somehow retains a keen instinct for magic.
Appearance:
Skid is over six feet tall, with a battered, unhealthy look to him. He’s usually unshaven, and his visible cyberware is usually scuffed and nicked. Skid dresses like an escapee from a 1970s disco, in recent years favoring a Sergeant Pepper jacket and bell-bottoms he picked up in some thrift store.
Favorite weapon:
There’s always an AK-98 assault rifle within arm’s reach of Skid if he has anything to say about it, and though he hates to do so, he’s ready to cast a mana bolt if the situation demands it.
Quirks:
Skid is a walking quirk. His collection of physical twitches, odd speech patterns, and out-of-focus gazes cause most people to give up talking to him within minutes. Still, adversaries underestimate him at their peril.
Rumors:
It’s said (especially by competing bar owners) that the Zombie Zoo isn’t named so for its decor of tombstones and ragged clothing on the faux-gore-streaked waitstaff, but that Skid actually performs experiments in the bar’s basement with the goal of reanimating dead tissue. If asked directly about this, Skid usually makes a remark about his genitals that no one wants to hear.
Character overview: Terry “Krasivi” Demidova
History:
Terry’s Russian parents were killed in a bioweapons attack on their home city. She was picked up by a corporate ‘recruitment’ squad, and trained in computers and combat to become one of their shadow operatives. When she completed their training program, she was partnered with Tina Mallyrn, and together they formed the destructive but successful team known as the “Sirens”. On the streets, she calls herself “Krasivi” (“gorgeous”), but those around her call her “Krazy”. They don’t do so to her face, however.
When Terry and Tina were double-crossed and left for dead by their superiors, they extricated themselves leaving a trail of bodies, and declared war against their former corporate patron, which no longer exists. They became free-lance mercenaries, and have since been put on permanent retainer by the Global Security Services Corporation.
Personality:
Terry is loud, sometimes quite silly, and capable of irrational bursts of anger. She’s only completely loyal to her best friend Tina, but would never betray an employer or friend who treats her honorably and well.
Appearance:
Krasivi is about 5’3″ tall, redheaded, and freckles a bit in the sun. While not muscled as a bodybuilder, she’s strong and fit, and has an iron constitution. On a job, Tina and Terry both usually wear heavy polymer full-body combat armor which has been enchanted to be completely transparent; it frequently amuses them to wear little more than lingerie beneath.
Favorite weapon:
Terry likes loud bangs, and usually carries an autoshotgun with a grenade launcher, or a man-portable missile launcher if she thinks she can justify it.
Quirks:
Terry sometimes has poor impulse control, and will do the most foolish things if they seem like a good idea for a moment. So far, luck, her own skills, and Tina’s help have kept any of her follies from causing her too much harm.
Rumors:
The street says that Terry and Tina enjoy creating amateur pornography in their off hours, but this is most likely just a reaction to the constant titillation of their armor choice.
Character overview: “Professor” Glenn Karter
History:
Glenn Karter was born in Virginia only a few years before it became part of the reborn Confederate States of America. Of middle-class origins, he made friends easily and by this mid-twenties had connections in several mid-Atlantic corporate entities and government bureaus. Showing an uncanny sense of timing, he frequently showed up in the right places at the right times to help out a friend or two, and by the 2050s he was moderately wealthy and even better connected.
By 2060, Karter’s Global Security Services Corporation began to make a name for itself. A smaller corp, it resisted every takeover bid by the megacorps; including, it’s said, several shadow-based attempts. Part mercenary unit, part philanthropic organization, part high-end R&D think tank, the GSSC often seems to be around when something bizarre’s going down. Karter is often there in person for the fireworks, and loves it.
His aliases when he’s working the streets to his own ends have included Professor K, Grinner, and Jack Mega. His employees often privately refer to Karter as Himself.
Personality:
Karter is good-humored, humble, and fairly quiet unless provoked, when his anger can blind like a flare grenade. He has an unfortunate habit of explaining a situation with obscure references and chains of logic no one else can follow.
Appearance:
Karter stands about six feet tall, and has a generally skinny build with a slight swivel-chair paunch he’s always trying to lose. He has shaggy sandy-brown hair, grey eyes, and usually wears a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. Karter is fond of vaguely paramilitary clothing, with styles and emblems that make him look like an officer in a military organization that never existed.
Favorite weapon:
When involved in a run, Karter’s often seen wearing a fencing rapier which may be infused with orichalcum, which is odd as he has no known magical abilities that the arcane metal would aid. When he desires a ranged weapon, there’s usually a prototype GSSC ionized plasma pistol on his hip, which can be tuned to deliver the non-lethal damage he prefers.
Quirks:
Karter absolutely refuses to watch an episode of any of the seventeen incarnations of Star Trek, and will leave the room if any are shown in his presence.
Rumors:
Researching Karter’s past brings up contradictions about various cities where he was born, his exact date of birth, and his precise climb to wealth and power. There is at least a small group of conspiracy theorists who believe that Karter’s past is completely manufactured, and that he’s an advance scout for an alien invasion. If this theory is mentioned to Karter, he will gleefully attest to its accuracy.
Karter may have a double to do some of his more shadowy work; some say he’s been seen in two far-separated areas of Seattle at the same time.
Character overview: April “Nebula” Vincent
History:
April entered the shadowrunning scene as a small-time indie rockergirl playing what clubs she could find, but as her reputation grew, she became well-known all over Seattle and even some places beyond. A talented decker as well, she made money off several bootleg albums by breaking into record company financial computers and taking what she felt was fair. The record companies used this in advertising, and everyone ended up happy.
Eventually, Nebula joined the Global Security Services Corporation worldwide troubleshooting company, where she theoretically works in HR, but often seems to be out on murky ‘special projects’.
Personality:
Bubbly and intelligent are the first terms that come to mind when describing this woman. She’s almost always charismatic and high-spirited, both of which serve her well on stage; and she loves a good puzzle to solve.
Appearance:
Nebula is tall with broad shoulders and hips. She has blue eyes, a narrow nose, and very dark black hair that she usually wears short on the right and waist-length on the left. Her eyebrows have an odd double curve that make them look like small comets. For street wear, she favors armored leathers, usually in asymmetric cuts to match her hairstyle. Her decking icon is a woman made of stars: a walking constellation.
Favorite weapon:
While she normally prefers to charm adversaries with her music, or ruin their credit ratings with her deck, Nebula has learned that sometimes the direct approach is best. She therefore has become quite skilled in the use of military-grade sniper rifles: she feels that the best fight is one that’s over before it gets to her.
Quirks:
Nebula will sometimes zone out in the middle of a stressful situation, which oddly enough will not prevent her from taking an active part in it though she’s “away”. Sometimes, she will even start singing, quietly or loudly. When she comes out of it, she will seem to be unaware of what just transpired.
Rumors:
After 20 years of adventuring, Nebula still looks about twenty-five years old, and no one can find any proof of surgery or magical preservation. She’s also rather vague about her childhood when asked; the street says she sprang into existence at 25 and is holding there.
She is believed to be the sometime bed partner of Glenn Karter, the owner of the GSSC.
Musical Astralnautics
Sometimes, I’ll put on a song, and a little electric thrill will build inside me and shoot through my skin and scalp unexpectedly. ELO’s “Twilight”, Jeff Wayne’s “Thunderchild”, and Jarre’s “Fourth Rendez-vous” are all repeat offenders. Today, the Eagles’ “Journey of the Sorcerer” in its full-length incarnation grabbed my nervous system that way. I haven’t really listened to it in years outside of a Hitchhiker’s Guide context, and I’d forgotten how it can take me away from everything for just a few seconds.
I have a soul that was built for fantasy trips, it seems.
Hello chummers!
This blog is for hosting information pertaining to our twice-monthly Shadowrun game. Enjoy!
The Science of Doctor Who: s01e04-5, “Aliens of London / World War Three”
Okay, huge gap between the last SoDW and this one. This is mainly because I really didn’t like this episode at all. The villains’ main characteristics were that they farted and giggled constantly, and the plotline itself seemed silly and self-indulgent on the part of the writer. (Oh, had I only known.) But in no particular order, let’s look at some of the scientific and technical details of the two-parter.
UNIT’s website can order UK military submarines to launch missiles; and the password is “buffalo” – a seven-character word, one found in English computer spellcheck dictionaries. From an Internet security standpoint, this password is pretty much like leaving the keys to your house in your mailbox, hidden among ten or twelve other keys: it’s not going to slow anyone down for long. Even “buff@l0” would be better, and “Buff@l0h3rds” better still; the latter is like hiding the key in your mailbox among several thousand other keys. Most burglars would quickly give up and move on. (Hope you remember which key’s yours!) No wonder that the UNIT brass in the episode were so quickly neutralized, if their security is this sloppy.
The idea of a U.N. website being able to tell a UK submarine to launch a missile on seconds’ notice is not any better. Imagine someone, upon gaining entry into your house with that mailbox key, being able to give your local police unquestioned orders to start arresting local citizens – without warrant – from your phone line. If you’re the mayor, you might maybe be able to get away with that briefly; but the U.N. certainly isn’t the mayor of the U.K. It has to go begging hat-in-hand to the British government just to get a few thousand troops at a time. Of course, in the 1970s, the world had trusted UNIT with the launch codes for its nuclear weapons as an insurance policy, so perhaps the world’s militaries are still doing the same in 2005…
The Slitheen plan is, as happens so often in alien invasions, crap. Earth’s nukes in 2005 could certainly make the planet uninhabitable, but wouldn’t really convert the entire surface to a ‘radioactive cinder’. The contaminated soil, rock, and water would make lousy spaceship fuel: we already understand well what materials make good fuel for reaction engines, and can make keen guesses at the needs of faster-than-light engines. Converting the planet to antimatter would make more sense if one’s looking to power space battleships and cruise liners, but our nukes certainly wouldn’t do that.
As it is, our nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste that isn’t really of much use. Some of it goes into superdense armor and projectiles for our war machines (and that has its own problems), but there’s no fueling problem this waste would solve that other material doesn’t solve better. And how annoying for the Slitheen is it going to be to mine, process, and ship the radioactive soil from Earth? They sure won’t be using us as slave labor: we’re all dead.
The big problem with alien invasions is that almost anything the aliens could possibly want from us is just as easy, if not easier, to get elsewhere. It would be like flying to Paris and taking on a couple of squads of their police for the privilege of mugging a little old lady for a bag of hot dog buns. Someone (maybe the “Predators” of movie fame) might find that entertaining, I suppose, but it’s just not necessary.
The Slitheen insist they’d become ridiculously rich from the sales – why not invest a little, and buy the lion’s share of the Earth’s nukes, then use them on some easy-to-harvest asteroids? I bet the Russians would gladly rid themselves of some of their useless warheads, especially in trade for high technology they could market to the rest of us or convert into more practical weapons for Earth conquest.
Moving on: late in the two-parter, the Doctor gives Mickey a CD-ROM that will erase all mention of him from the Internet. That’s fine, except a virus that will work equally well on all the different operating systems currently composing the Internet would be a nice trick, and sure wouldn’t do much to offline digital and hardcopy storage. Future episodes suggest that it didn’t work anyway, so the Doctor may have overreached himself. It would almost have been more convincing if he had zapped Mickey’s cable modem with his sonic screwdriver and declared, “I’m no longer recorded in Earth’s computer network.” (Well, no… not really.)
Lastly, something I’ve discussed elsewhere but care to repeat here. The fictional United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was introduced to Doctor Who in the 1970s, back when SF writers still seemed to think it would be more productive for the human race to work together on world-threatening issues. Writer Russell Davies killed its senior staff in this episode, potentially implying the end of the organization (to be replaced by Torchwood, perhaps). However, it later reappeared as the “Unified” Intelligence Taskforce, with Davies claiming the the real U.N. had written him and asked for the change.
Now, the U.N. has been portrayed in fiction since its beginnings, often very unflatteringly. (In Rapture storytelling, it often becomes a tyrannical world dictatorship, for example.) The idea that after thirty-five years, someone at the U.N. suddenly objected to the organization’s positive portrayal on a slightly cheesy SF series astounds me. I find it far, far more plausible that RTD just didn’t like the idea of UNIT – wanting to switch to a more British organization – and for his own reasons chose this story to support the change. But I suppose we will never know for sure, and it’s canon now… until the next retcon.
EDIT: Actually, I just had a thought about the change: perhaps there is some weird copyright on potential merchandising of UNIT emblems, toys, and such by the BBC. This still sounds shaky… the Japanese are still labeling Macross toys ‘U.N. Spacy’ (space army), and I’d not think I’d have to ask Germany’s permission to market a “German Army Toy Soldier”, but international copyright is a strange thing. I could imagine it would be just easier to market the Unified toys without having to give the U.N. a cut, or a preview, or whatever. I’d probably believe this story if they tried it on me.
Next time: a superior episode in every way. EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
To Healthy Competition
Some of my fellow geeks seem surprised when they learn I’m happy that Android phones are doing so well. But even though I’m using an iPhone now, I’d prefer that it be a difficult choice; I may like Apple products, but I want there to always be someone out there that keeps them innovating, refining, and generally working hard to convince me that they should keep my business. There was a bad period in the nineties when Apple computers were beginning to… well, ‘suck’ is probably too strong a word, though plenty of folks used it. Now that the company’s doing so well, I’d hate to see them get lazy again.
So if you have an Android phone, and you really like it, I think that’s awesome and I won’t try especially hard to evangelize you. Don’t let them get lazy on you, either 🙂
Thai Chicken Chips
Slice 1 lb. chicken breasts into slices 1/4 – 1/3 inch thick.
Place in a Ziploc bag with 1/2 cup of peanut sauce. Mix the contents well.
Seal the bag and marinade chicken in fridge for 20 minutes.
Place chicken slices on roasting pan and cook in a 375 degree oven for about six minutes or until chicken is cooked through but tender.
Serve over Thai noodles in more peanut sauce, or rice, or whatever.
Best part? I didn’t get this recipe from anywhere. I made it up tonight off the top of my head; and Starr says it’s *excellent*.
